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- "We want to see the potato!"
"We want to see the potato!"
Translation:Wir möchten die Kartoffel sehen!
26 Comments
lol, you know potato is Germany's national cuisine. in addition to that, during WWII, aproximately 24 tons of potato was made into 5.6 tons of Ethyl Alcohol which was then used to fuel a V2 rocket (the first ballistic missle ever). That's why dass du immer die Kartoffel sehen möchtest, oder?
When does "moechten" take the meaning of "wollen" exactly?
This sentence reads like it should take "wollen" rather than "moechten"
275
Normally I would translate 'möchten' with 'would like', and 'wollen' with 'want'. (I'm not a native speaker but I lived in Germany for 25 years.)
At what point would you consider yourself native? You've been there for 25 years and speaking german for at least 15 of them. So...
- 917
Native is defined as someone who was able to improvise a whole grammatical (a.k.a.: "correct") sentence by the age of 5. It doesn't matter how good or bad you are with the language or how much experience you have with it. Actually it's not rare for native migrant speakers to not be able to use the whole language because of their life circumstances (in such cases, we say that they are heritage speakers). What matters is the naturalness of the language: A native speaker has an unconscious intuition, but the L2 speaker (the one who learned it after 5) is fully conscious and does not know how to react to situations outside of what he knows.
Wollen is also accepted here. It just sounds less polite.
I think the reason that "want" sometimes still translates naturally to möchten rather than wollen is that the politeness threshold is different for each.
This is just a bad translation in my opinion. There's a difference between 'want' and 'would like' just like there's a difference between 'moechten' and 'wollen'.
- 1967
Isn't "möchten" .. "would like to", and "wollen,"" want"? It's one of Duo's infamous weird sentences again! I don't think I'll ever need to say that!
- 845
Möchten is a verb from derived from the modal verb mögen, namely the Konjunktiv II, but used with present meaning.
The modal verb in its infinitive form mögen generally means “to like” and this is the meaning you express if you conjugate it with a -g- in its root (mag). However, the conjugation with -chte (möchte) means “to want/would like”.
The explanation is similar in English: “liking something” doesn’t mean you “want” it. But used with the modal verb “would” (corresponding to Konjunktiv II in German), i.e. saying “you would like something”, this is a polite way to express that you want something.
The last important thing you must know is that the conjugation with -g- (mag/mög-) normally is combined with a noun while the conjugation with -cht- (möchte) can be combined both with a noun and a verb.
If you wonder how we express in German that you “like doing something”, we use the adverb gern(e) after the conjugated verb.
To want is to demand. Moechten does not express this, it is a polite request. The correct English is "We would like to see the potato"
Why not betrachten instead of sehen?
betrachten is to look at or to observe, not to see.
- 546
No, not "möchten!" "Möchten" translates as "would like to", not as "want to." This is an important distinction in German. Please do not conflate the two verbs!!!
Why was wollen unacceptable?
Because wollen only means "want", not "We want to see the potato!". You'll have to write more words than just that.
If you have a screenshot that shows the exercise you had, your full answer, and perhaps also Duolingo's reaction, then show it to us, please -- upload it to a website somewhere (e.g. imgur) and tell us the URL of the image.
In any event, please always let us know your entire answer if you want helpful responses.
Perhaps you mis-spelled some other word (e.g. Kartofell instead of Kartoffel)? Perhaps your word order is wrong (e.g. Wir wollen sehen die Kartoffel)? Perhaps you used the wrong gender (e.g. Wir wollen den Kartoffel sehen)?
It's impossible to tell if all you'll divulge is that you used wollen (which is part of several accepted translations).
PLEASE tell me what's so special about this POTATO? enough already!
