"Alex ist eine Frau, kein Mann."
Translation:Alex is a woman, not a man.
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I also answered with 'Alex is a woman, not man.' and it was incorrect. Is it assumed because we said 'A woman' that we should also say 'a man' or is there a grammatical indication within the sentance I missed?
195
Yes, that’s right. Singular count nouns must have an article or a determiner of some kind.
I said that "Alex is a woman, not man' and it counted it wrong and said it should be 'Alex is a woman no man' how does that make any sense.....
"Alex is a woman not a man" is the correct translation. "Alex" is short for either Alexander or Alexandra.
- 195
Because we only use keinen if a masculine noun is the direct object of a verb--that is, if some action is done to it. There is no action in this sentence, and so no object of that action. No one is doing anything to the man, only stating that Alex isn't one.
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I've actually made a similar mistake before but the other way round. I was distributing documents to an 'Alex' thinking he was a woman a few years ago.
Wrote aleks and got it wrong. I understand that it is wrong but im a non english speaker and rely a lot on phonetics, so stuff like this is just a little annoying.
- 195
Yes. Note that it's spelled Alex in German as well, not just in English... Next time that sentence pops up, now you know.
- 195
Because the verb sein (to be) doesn’t take a direct object— there’s no action taking place. The sentence is saying that a certain person is one thing and not another, so there’s no reason to use accusative case.
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This threw me off, because I always translated "kein" as "no" in the sense of "I am no man!" But, using that translation doesn't work in English (we can't say, "Alex is a woman, no man.")
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The answer should be accepted. Whether the name is spelled aleks or alex is not important. This is not grammar.