"Er hat den Fernseher bezahlt."

Translation: He has paid for the TV set.

[Chitresh_Chahar]

Is there no word for "for" in german?
"paid for" here stems from bezahlt?... past tense?

[mizinamo]

zahlen = to pay (intransitive); bezahlen = to pay for. Similarly with antworten = to answer (intransitive), beantworten = to answer (transitive). So the question is, why can't English say "to pay the TV"? :)

[Ajna]

Is "He has paid the TV" wrong in english?

[gracenut]

Definitely, unless "He" is actually giving money to the TV itself, I think

[Ajna]

Mh, I thought it was a transitive form (like to pay a debt or a bill) that made sense.

Well, thanks for correcting me, Haley. Again :D!

[slytherclaw]

I said "he has the tv paid off." It was really a shot in the dark, but the reason I didn't just say that he paid for the tv is that "has paid" is not the literal "has", and I assumed that it would be conveyed a different way in other languages. Is present perfect then created the same way in German as in English?

[christian]

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~german/Grammatik/perfect/Perfect.html

[Chitresh_Chahar]

Also can we phrase it as "Er hat bezahlt den Fernseher"?

[ArvindhMani]

Chitresh, No you cannot. The verb always goes to the end in such cases.

[Jethrey]

So 'he has bought the television' is wrong?

[mizinamo]

That's correct; bezahlen is just to pay for, not to buy. "Er hat den Fernseher gekauft" would be "He has bought the television".

[MurrayDouglas]

I can't imagine the difference between paying for something and buying it. What purpose does this distinction serve?

[mizinamo]

Paying is handing over money. Buying is transferring ownership.

Perhaps I went into the store and picked out a TV set because I need a new one. But I don't have the money, so my father paid for it. But I was the one who bought it (= whose property it became).

[MurrayDouglas]

thanks for helping me clear up my imagination!

[rodjell]

Why was "bought" not accepted I wonder.

[RossLarcom]

'Er bezahlte die Rechnung' is 'He paid the bill'. Why isn't bezahlte at the end of this sentence?

[christian]

"Er bezahlte den Fernseher" and "Er hat den Fernseher bezahlt" are different tenses.

Give these a thorough read.

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~deutsch/Grammatik/perfect/Perfect.html

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~deutsch/Grammatik/SimplePast/SimplePast.html