"Diese Katze ist mein Chef, nicht mein Haustier!"
Translation:This cat is my boss, not my pet!
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If that were true and the cat were the boss, then you'd be the one feeding it and cleaning up its...oh.
Besides this being a senseless sentence, wouldn't it be wrong grammatically?? If Katze is feminine why isn't it: "diese Katze ist meine Chefin, nicht mein Haustier!
It's the "CAT" which is feminine, not the "CHEF", so its right as it is. 'Diese katze'- feminine and 'mein chef' - masculine. So unless the 'Chef (Boss)' is female, you can't say it as 'Diese Katze ist meine Chefin, nicht mein Haustier'. You HAVE to say 'Diese Katze ist mein Cheff, nicht mein Haustier'.
If this is helpful, please reply.
I get what you mean, but I still think Araucoforever has a point. We're equating the cat with the boss. The German word for cat used here is Katze, not Kater, which means that it's a female cat. Thus, the sentence should either be... - "Dieser Kater ist mein Chef, nicht mein Haustier" or... - "Diese Katze ist meine Chefin, nicht mein Haustier".
I realize that usually you would use Katze as a neutral term when you don't know the gender of the cat, but whatever word you use to write "boss" is bringing gender into it, so that should affect what word you use to write "cat".
Just like you can write "Die Schüler" to mean a group of pupils - both male and female - but if you wrote "Die Schüler sind meine Chefinen" (Ok, I'm not entirely sure what the plural form of Chefin is. I hope it's correct), that would be confusing.
Do you get what I mean? One is either neutral or female (or male in the last example) and the other is male (or female in the last example). Shouldn't it match up??
2264
The Schüler/innen/Chef/innen example isn't quite the same. Both those words behave identically with regard to gender: one form has masculine grammatical gender, and can refer to males, a mixed group, or people of unspecified gender. If we use the "-innen" form for one, then we're definitely talking about an all-female group, so it makes sense to use -innen for the other noun as well.
But "Katze" refers to female, or non-specified, or mixed sex (as "Katzen"). So if we're talking about a cat and not specifying its gender, "Katze" + "Chef" seems appropriate. If we wanted to specify that it was a female cat, then we would use "Chefin".
- 2264
Es ist nicht sinnlos. Meine Katze denkt, dass sie ist mein Chef, denn ich mache was sie will.
I suppose it could either be something from the realm of fantasy (like so many other Duo sentences), or something a pet-owner would say in jest when complaining about how demanding their pet is (always wanting to be fed or played with, for example).
- 1948
Ich habe zwei Katzen. Sie sagten zu mir: "Wir sind nicht nur Katzen, noch nur dein Chef. Betrach uns als kleine Götter. Nun, wo ist unser Fisch?"
https://www.businesscatcomic.com/
And a German version for practice! https://www.businesscatcomic.com/de/
Two things:
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I realised that I have not come across ,,der Kater'', which refers to a male cat specifically. The course has so far only introduced ,,die Katze'' up to this point. This question came as a listening exercise to me, but ,,Dieser Kater ist mein Chef, nicht mein Haustier'' is probably a valid sentence as well.
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What is the difference between ,,Chef | Chefin'' and ,,Leiter | Leiterin''?
It's possible to avoid this question as to whether to use "die Katze" or "der Kater" for "cat". Just choose the neuter term "Kaetzchen" ("little cat"). That's assuming, of course, that the cat in question isn't one of those big fat moggies we sometimes see.
- 2264
The gender of the word doesn't always match the gender of the entity. "Kater" means specifically a male cat, but "Katze" can be a female cat or one of non-specified gender. "Chef"/"Chefin" works the other way: "Chefin" refers specifically to a female boss, "Chef" could be used for a male boss or for a boss of non-specified gender.
So the English equivalents would be: "Diese Katze ist meine Chefin": this cat is a female boss. "Dieser Kater ist mein Chef": this male cat is a boss. "Diese Katze ist mein Chef": this cat is a boss (without specifying the cat's gender).
An English comparison would be words like actor/actress. An "actress" is always female, but an "actor" isn't always male: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_paid_film_actors. OTOH, a "drake" is a male duck but a "duck" isn't necessarily female.
So I could write something like "the duck was the best actor in that film" and it would be similar to "diese Katze ist mein Chef".
