"Welches Haus ist deinem gegenüber?"
Translation:Which house is across from yours?
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Since I'm not a native english speaker I have a simmilar question: Why is "which house is opposite yours?" wrong?
What MadelineRainey said - here's a link to the Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary to confirm for you (with examples):
http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/opposite%5b4%5d
Well, the easy answer is because, when translating from German to English, "yours opposite" is not how it's said in English. As for a rule in German as to why the correct word order in German is "deinem gegeüber" and not "gegeüber deinem" I can't find a rule in my google searches to explain it but to me "gegenüber deinem" just sounds wrong. Maybe it's not all that wrong, I don't know. Clearly I am not providing expert response but maybe some response is better than none? I should probably shut up now.
Across and across from are different.
My child lies across my lap while I read him bedtime stories.
My child sits across from me, on the other side of the table.
Including "from" shows distance between the two items, "my child" and "me". Your sentence, "Which house is across yours," might be used in a post-hurricane description where a house has landed on top of your friend's house, crosswise (in which case, both would have been destroyed). :)
No, that doesn't work in English. Picture yourself in a queue. The person in front of you probably has his/her back to you (and is therefore not opposite).
It's similar when you describe something as being in front of your house; it can be facing any direction: a car stopped in front of your house is not likely facing your house (and therefore not opposite).
If a suspicious person is walking down the other side of the street stops to stare at your house, you could describe that person to the police as being opposite your house.
Being opposite a house implies facing it.
Thank you, Madeline. In Spanish it is different, then, that in English. I think it may be because in our language "front" is "Frente" and this word means also forehead. In Spanish, the person who is in the queue in front of me would not be described as "frente a mí", but "delante de mí" which means something like "before me". May the German course for Spanish speakers be released soon... though I am improving my English as well.
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I wouldn't care to speculate on that last one, but I will say that "opposite from" sounds quite peculiar to me.
Which house (dative-no article) is to your {house(dative: implied)}, across the street? or (To or from) Which house is your house (across, across from, opposite to, across the street)? Apparently in German the dative case for 'Haus' with no article gets connected to the pronoun 'dein', or more simply, the house across or opposite yours. We would want to write incorrectly(? not sure) in German: Welches Haus ist gegenüber deinem house? or Welches House gebenüber deinem House ist? only like English the verb doesn't always go to the end of the sentence. We tend to think of gegenüber as a kind-of direction of movement action (I had to look it up to see if it's a verb or a noun... it's a noun). Or at least that's how I see it. It is actually in English a gerund phrase like in Which house is across the street from yours? or "Which house is across from yours?" :-)
I actually write these posts as an inward look from which I learn the proper way to say it in German. As such, I hope it's helpful. As cases go, it's one of those exceptions by using the "em" ending instead of "en" for seinem instead of seinen Haus. I actually incorrectly translated to English as: "Which house across the street is yours?" of course... marked wrong.
The above paragraph is rather complicated so I hesitate to reply, but I have to comment on the first bit in brackets as I think it includes a typo:
In "Welches Haus ist deinem gegenüber?", "Welches Haus" is not dative but nominative, as the subject of the sentence. It is correct to say that no definite article has been included, and I'm pretty sure that accounts for the "Welches" form, indicating the gender (neuter).
The next bit in brackets is correct: "house" is implied (i.e. not present but understood to be there in the meaning of the phrase) and "deinem [Haus]" is in the dative, as required by the use of "gegenüber".
That particular preposition, "gegenüber", is unusual in going to the end of the sentence or clause.