"Nobody would believe us."
Translation:Keiner würde uns glauben.
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"Keiner würde uns glauben." is also correct.
In German, the "es" is very common in this context. Much more common than adding "it" is in english .
(How would you actually say that in english? "Nobody would believe it from us" doesn't sound right, and "Nobody would believe it us" is obviously completely wrong!)
These two sentences are both valid in English but they have different meanings!
Nobody would believe us (we are liars)
Nobody would believe it of us (we do something which nobody would expect us to do)
I'm curious, which is the actual meaning of the German sentence?
"Nobody would believe it [coming] from us," is alright. A little unusual, but it depends on the context.
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Thanks. And you're right, in English "it" is less common in this context. You would probably say, just as above, "Nobody would believe us," or you could say "Nobody would believe it" ("it" being the thing they would not believe us about).
If you wanted to get both "it" (for the unbelievable statement) and "us" (the unbelieved tellers of the tale) in there, you might say something like "Nobody would believe it if we told them."
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why is this wrong: Es wuerde uns niemand glauben. In my ear that rings correct, but it was marked wrong...
You're right, that should work as well. I've added it as an alternative now.
Why does that work? I was under the impression that the subject had to be adjacent to verb it conjugates. Is that not correct, or is "niemand" not the subject?
John, you are right that Rauchbier's sentence (Es würde uns niemand glauben) does not follow the word order rules. And as you say, niemand is the subject. Nonetheless, if you put Rauachbier's sentence in a Google search bar with quotation marks around it, you will find that it does show up in a few literary pieces. I guess you could call it literary license. Here are some examples:
"Wenn der vierzehnjährige Fabio es nicht als Video aufgenommen hätte, es würde uns niemand glauben!"
"Was weiter darauf folgt, müssen wir verschweigen, denn es würde uns niemand glauben."
Since the sentence given in English is very straight-forward, not using any literary license or older style of writing, then I don't think Duo would be obliged to accept this translation, even though it is found in good German writing.
The English sentence DOES NOT INCLUDE THE WORD "it". Yet the German solution does. How can one tell that the word "it" is to be added to the German sentence?