"Meine Tochter ist bei ihren Großeltern."
Translation:My daughter is with her grandparents.
77 Comments
Could this sentence also be: "Meine Tochter ist MIT ihren GroBeltern"? "mit" instead of "bei"? Is there a reason that "bei" is being used instead?
Yes, „Meine Tochter ist bei ihren Großeltern.“ means “My daughter is [located] at her grandparents['s place]”. But ‘mit’ is used instead of ‘bei’ if she's traveling with her grandparents, as in „Meine Tochter ist mit ihren Großeltern unterwegs.“ = “My daughter is en route with her grandparents.”; or if she's together with her grandparents somewhere other than their place, as in „Meine Tochter ist mit ihren Großeltern im Kino.“ = “My daughter is in the cinema with her grandparents.”.
No, "mit ihren Großeltern" is wrong. You need to use "bei".
"my daughter is with her grandparents" and my daughter eats with her grandparents" would sound the same?
No. "My daughter eats with her grandparents" is "Meine Tochter ISST mit ihren Großeltern" Isst and ist are two different verbs.
i have a question. the difference wouldn't be the "mit" in "Meine Tochter isst --mit-- ihren Großeltern." or you could say "Meine Tochter isst --bei-- ihren Großeltern." and mean the same? are both well said?
Both are proper, but they have different meanings: ‘bei’ means “at their place” (like the French ‘chez’); ‘mit’ means “together with them [somewhere else]”.
According to christian, "mit" is wrong in this case: http://www.duolingo.com/comment/413531
This doesn't apply here since you have a different verb. In our case (with "essen"), both "mit" and "bei" are possible – Andreas Witnstein mentioned the different meanings. With the verb "sein" it can only be "bei".
Sorry Christian, but on this occasion you are wrong. Many native German friends have confirmed that there is indeed a subtle difference, related to short and long sounds, ist and isst should sound slightly different (for an advanced German student or native speaker). Renato (above) was perfectly right in his comment, unfortunately you told him otherwise.
This is incorrect. In standard German they are exact homophones. No difference whatsoever.
@d2coutinho: No need to be sarcastic. They are wrong. The point is this: Standard German only distinguishes between long and short vowels. Anything in between doesn't carry any meaning by definition. So there can't be "subtle differences in the length of vowels" to distinguish between "ist" and "isst". If there were and they were used to distinguish between "ist" and "isst", that would mean that you have found an additional German phoneme (that's exactly the definition of a phoneme) that a) is used by millions of German speakers throughout German speaking countries (otherwise, it can't be part of standard German) and b) hasn't been noticed by professional linguists yet (otherwise, they would distinguish at least three classes of vowel lengths) and this with words as common as "ist" and "isst". You can judge by yourself how likely such a scenario is. And even if this all were the case, it would still have to be recognized by a standardization body to be part of the standard language and incorporated into the "official" phoneme inventar of German. So, yes: You can tell your friends they're wrong.
@wataya : Wow. I wasn't being sarcastic. It's tricky to be sure without listening to my tone of voice, I agree. But hey, that sounded aggressive from you..no need. (of course I will never be sure if you meant to, there's no standardization body for tone of voice/written words :P )
I'm genuinely pleased to be learning that much about German with you guys, including IST and ISST :)
Merry Christmas anyhow! :)
In careful speech, they are pronounced exactly the same. In colloquial (rapid) speech, however, people may drop the /t/ in "ist". The quality of the /s/ does not change, though.
Just chiming in to confirm what christian said. In standard German 'ist' and 'isst' are exact homophones. In some regiolects the 't' may be omitted in rapid speech as christian already pointed out. But this is not standard German and therefore not really relevant for duolingo.
@KendallHolm: That's a feature of the Ruhr regiolect. It's also common to merge verbs and personal pronouns. "Verben + nachgestellte Personalpronomina verschmelzen regelmäßig. An der Verbindungsstelle kommt es zu zusätzlichen lautlichen Anpassungen. Hier die Serie mit kommen im Präsens: kommich, kommße, kommter, kommtse, kommdet/kommtet, kommwer, kommder/kommter, kommse/kommense." http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhrdeutsch
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I made some people say, "sie ist bei ihm" und "sie isst bei ihm" and in the first version the "t" is omitted. Not so in the "eat" version. - Edit, because your comment must have slipped in while I was writing mine - The funny thing is, when you make people pronounce the t in "ist" they tend to stress the s in "isst". At least here around me in Berlin. :-) "Sie ist bei ihm denn sie isst gerne bei ihm".
Dont you do that with a lot of verbs. I was talking to this one german femal and she kept dropping all of the verb endings. Like when she said Sie machen she said Sie mach or she would say Sie brauch instead of Sie brauchen
@Kendall: Are you sure she didn't just have hiccups? "Sie mach" and "Sie brauch" are definitely way off ;-)
@wataya Maybe ... it sounded natural to me. She would also do it to the endings of dies, kein, ein and any other word that has endings that change. She is from Essen and she is supposed to help me with my colliqual speech and she def has issues with endings or she is intentionally leaving the endings out.
I accidentally put 'my daughter is with "your" grand parents' and it got accepted? Should it be wrong, I am confused? Dative: Your -> Ihrer?
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It should be wrong, I think. "Meine Tochter ist bei Ihren Großeltern." that's how the sentence would look like. The "Sie", "Ihren", "Ihnen" is always capitalized if it is meant to be a (formal) you.
Since one of the proposed translations of "bei" is "near", could the present sentence be translated as "My daughter is near her grandparents"?
Technically yes, but it wouldn't be interpreted that way. If you wanted to say "near her parents", you'd say something along the lines of "in der Nähe ihrer Großeltern".
It says that another correct solution is "My daughter is with her grandparents." but shouldn't her in dativ be "ihrer"?
i absolutely can't understand why it is here "ihren" instead of "ihnen"?? "Grosseltern" are plural..help:(
‘bei ihnen’ = “by them”
‘bei ihren Großeltern’ = “by {her|their} grandparents”
‘bei ihrem Großelternteil’ = “by {her|their} grandparent”
Doesnt "bei" also mean "at"? I translated the sentence as "at her grandparents" and it was marked wrong.
Does this sentence imply that the daughter is living with her grandparents as opposed to her with them at the moment ? At least that's how I understood the difference of bei and mit.
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No. You simply don't use "mit" with persons in these contexts in German.
"Meine Tochter ist bei ihren Großeltern." doesn't state whether she's there right now or permanently. If you want to say that she is living with her grandparents, you'd say "Meine Tochter lebt bei ihren Großeltern." or "Meine Tochter wohnt bei ihren Großeltern."
The difference of "mit" and "bei" is that "mit" is always used if two or more people are doing the same together. So you can "mit jemandem Eis essen gehen" (Going out for ice cream with someone), "mit jemandem ins Kino gehen" (going to the movies with someone), "mit jemanden kochen" (cooking with someone) ect., but if someone is (only) in the care (for children) of another or as a location information - near someone else., you use "bei".
"Meine Tochter ist bei ihren Großeltern." doesn't say anything about what they're doing, whether they're doing something together. It is meant to say that you don't have to worry because the grandparents make sure that nothing happens to her (or that she doesn't harm anything/anyone else) OR that she is at her grandparents' house or with her grandparents somewhere else. (So you know where to pick her up or that you can call her by calling her grandparents' (cell) phone number.)
Thanks for the elaborate reply. This kinda helped me clear up some confusion on the two words :.
The first letter of a sentence is capitalized: ‘Meine’, not ‘meine’.
The first letter of a noun is capitalzied: ‘Tochter’, not ‘tochter’; ‘Großeltern’, not ‘großeltern’.
The vowel in ‘Groß’ is tense (long), so it's written with ‘ß’, not ‘ss’.
Why not "bei ihrem Großeltern"? as Großeltern is Neuter and its article in the Dat. case is Dem.
The ‘-n’ suffix in ‘Großeltern’ is not, as it might appear to be, a masculine singular dative suffix. ‘Großeltern’=“grandparents” is a masculine plural noun, and has no singular form. The singular is ‘Großelternteil’=“grandparent”.
I thought ihr was = her and ihren was = their. Does anyone have a simple explanation for me? Thanks
The possessive adjective ‘ihr’ can mean “her”, “their”, or (if capitalized ‘Ihr’) “your [formal]”; only the context can tell the difference.
The ending ‘-en’ in this sentence is the dative plural: dative because the preposition ‘bei’ always takes the dative case; plural because ‘Großeltern’ is plural.
German adjective declension is complicated. The declension of the possessive adjective ‘ihr’ is:
m.s. f.s. n.s. plural
ihr ihre ihr ihre nominative
ihres ihrer ihres ihrer genitive
ihrem ihrer ihrem ihren dative
ihren ihre ihr ihre accusative
Thank you very much. Your explanation is very thorough and helpful. I obviously need to learn more grammar with my list of words (:
Really the question should be 'Meine Tochter bei meinen Eltern.', because it is saying that the daughter is with the parents parents, not 'Meine Tochter ist mit ihren Großeltern.', my daughter is with her grandparents. Even though it still all makes sense.
How do you distinguish between "my daughter is with her grandparents" and "my daughter is with your grandparents"
In writing, “your [formal]” would be capitalized as ‘Ihren’, whereas “their” wouldn't be. In spoken German, they would only be distinguishable from the context.
OK that sounds right but how come you used "their".... I'm looking at "her grandparents" and "your grandparents"
Sorry, I misread your question. In German, the possessive adjectives ‘ihr’=“her” and ‘ihr’=“their” are identically pronounced and spelled in all declensions. The possessive adjective ‘Ihr’=“your [formal]”, which was historically the “royal they” is also identically pronounced and spelled in all declensions, except that it's capitalized.
So I suppose it's only distinguishable by context then. Thanks for the help
Everyone's arguing about ist/isst and I just want to know how to differentiate ihr as her and ihr as your in this context. I entered eating with your grandfather and got it correct, so I was wondering if there was any way you could tell. Thanks.
Only from the context; ‘ihr’ is pronounced identically whether it means ‘her’, ‘your’, or ‘you’.
