"Seine großen Tiere haben Hunger."
Translation:His large animals are hungry.
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Please can someone explain why there is 'en' at the end of grossen. i thought it should just be grosse.
The simple answer is because it is plural. Das große blaue Pferd becomes die großen blauen Pferde. Sein takes the place of das (possessive determiner as others have said) and so Sein große blaue Pferd becomes Seine großen blauen Pferde. The other comments are correct, it is mixed inflection but the easy way to remember it is that after Die or the possessive determiners, all descriptive adjectives in the plural end with n or en.
After possessive determiners (e.g. "seine"), the mixed inflection is used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_adjectives#Weak_and_strong_inflection
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Take a look at Hartmut Rastalsky's site at UMichigan. Unique and simple: (or at least as simple as German gets :)
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/german/hmr/grammatik/Adjektive/Adjektivendungen.html
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Thank you so much Klaque for the recommendation. It is a very good lesson to understand the adjectives endings :)
If you go to the "Colors" lesson and click on Tips and Notes, then scroll down to the Nominative section, you'll see under plural how there is an option with define article, indefinite article and no article.
So, in the case of your question, "seine" would fit under "keine" above, which means it gets an n at the end of grosse(n).
Had there been no "Seine" at the beginning of the sentence it would have been written "Grosse Tiere haben Hunger."
Hope that helps.
- 342
Is "grossen" incorrect or am I missing something. When there is an adjective and no article I thought adjectives of plurals that are nominative case would take just an e at the end (http://german.morley-computing.co.uk/adjectiveEndings3.php)
"Größen" ist the plural of "Größe" (size)
"großen" comes from "groß" (big)
two different words
Declension is the inflection of nouns. (Similarly, conjugation is the inflection of verbs.)
i answered "his big animals are hungry" and it was not accepted this is what is annoying with duolingo large and big mean the same in English
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@kevinbyberge : sein (possessive pronoun) always means "his"
See full inflection here: http://canoo.net/inflection/sein:Pron:Poss:3rd:M:SG
His large animals have hunger.... Literal translation....but incorrect? Wieso?!
To make it simple if a possessive pronoun is used treat the adjective ending like an indefinite article?
Could one not use "größer" here, meaning that his bigger animals are hungry ?-the small ones had enough to eat.
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You would need "seine größeren Tiere" ☺
First the comparative ending, then the declension.
sfuspvwf npj
So this was meant to be a lesson about comparison and yet not a single one of the tasks (this was the last one) was about comparing and what the 'notes' prepared me for.
So is 'Das ___' generally 'großen' or something with the n on the end?
Das Großen Madchen?
- 2304
Hallo!
First thing first, you capitalise your nouns, not the adjectives.
Second, "das Mädchen" needs its Umlaut (all Umlauts are equally important). If you really can't type them, please write them as "Maedchen" (works with every umlauted vowel).
Finally, declensions and not grasping them properly is what stopped me from learning German for actual years, before I was explained them properly (then it was a mere matter of weeks before it became second nature, and I could learn the rest in a painless way). You can do the same, I trust you.
Pretty please, use one of the links provided up there in this very thread, study the rules, learn the tables, practice, and if you still stumble, ask a precise question. I or someone else will answer with pleasure.
In other words, no, "das" does not require "n" (it would actually be "das große Mädchen"), here the plural is what requires it, but it is really too complicated to explain in a forum post.
But not that complicated either ☺
sfuspvwf npj
