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- "Are you cold?"
"Are you cold?"
Translation:Ist euch kalt?
80 Comments
I was told by another German student that when you want to express that you are cold or hot to always use the dative 'To me it is cold/hot' because saying Ich bin kalt/heiß implied one was sexually cold/hot. o.O Perhaps a native speaker can confirm. (So, to answer your question (!), I think the above sentence is short for Es ist euch kalt?)
Not a native speaker, but I did hear a native speaker say just what you've said. In German one would say "Es ist mir kalt" or "Mir ist (es) kalt" to mean "I am cold." Keeping with the pattern, "es ist dir kalt" would mean "you are cold" (word for word, literally "it is to me cold") and then shifting words to get a question comes out "ist es dir kalt?"
In German you don't say 'I am cold', you say (translated literally into English) 'To me it is cold' which is 'Mir ist es kalt' or 'Es ist mir kalt'. In general usage, the es is often dropped out of the phrase.
So when using this phrase the verb is always 'ist' (as it relates to the 'es' which may or may not be there) and the pronoun must be in the dative form.
So you get: Mir ist (es) kalt Dir ist (es) kalt or 'Ist dir kalt?' Ihm/Ihn ist (es) kalt Uns ist (es) kalt Euch ist (es) kalt or 'Ist euch kalt?' Ihnen ist (es) kalt or' Ist Ihnen kalt?'
Because you conjugate the subject (nominative) not your indirect object (dative). For these you can always change the dative and not verb, z.B.: Ist es dir/euch/Ihnen kalt? And all of those would be correct. Notice that this would be like wording in English: "Is it cold to you?" not "Are it cold to you?" [Which would be how the ihr (euch in dative) form would conjugate], which unless your are a pirate, is incorrect.
Actually, most Germans are so unfamiliar with this rare dialect usage that they are confused by it and consider it simply "wrong". (cf. following links for a few example references) http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=974554 http://www.gutefrage.net/frage/ich-habe-kalt-sagt-sie http://www.saarbruecker-zeitung.de/familienmagazin/themen/art260711,4328702
423
Sie sind kalt is not accepted 01.10.2015 But I think the problem is the verb, it's not "sind" but "ist" es...
1284
4 months later I know the answer to my own question. For it to work it would have to be "Bist du kalt?" Funny how you can look back at how much you have learned over time. :)
1284
Someone should just list all the ways to say this in Dative for du/er/sie/sie/Sie (singular + plural formal)/Ihr.
I believe it's "bist du kalt", "ist er kalt", "ist sie kalt", "(???)", "ist Ihren kalt", (???) and "ist euch kalt".
I'm unsure about how you would translate "are they cold" and "are you could (plural formal)".
Both of your sentences are correct translations of the English sentence. Which one you use depends on whether 'you' is singular or plural. In German, there are multiple ways of saying 'you', as follows: 'du' (singular informal), 'ihr' (plural informal), and 'Sie' (singular/plural formal). Of course, this only applies to the nominative case, so let's expand it for a couple more grammatical cases: du (nominative) - dich (accusative) - dir (dative) ihr (nominative) - euch (accusative) - euch (dative) Sie (nominative) - Sie (accusative) - Ihnen (dative) In this particular sentence, we're concerned with the dative form, so actually we can use either 'dir', 'euch', or 'Ihnen', depending on whether whoever we're talking to just one person or more, or whether it is appropriate to address the person informally or formally. Modern "Standard" English makes it easy by using the form 'you' for the singular or plural form, and by not making a distinction in formality; however, many dialects do have plural forms of 'you'.