- Forum >
- Topic: German >
- "Uns geht es gut."
41 Comments
Should be, "We are doing well" -- strictly speaking, "We are doing good" is incorrect English here -- or maybe colloquial English is a better way to put it.
As others have pointed out, "We are doing good" is shorthand for "we are doing good works" or "we are doing good things", as Whitey Bulger might have said, as he and his buds walked awy from a shot-up car.
Don't downvote me, I'm just the messenger here!
I appreciate you saying this. What I wonder, though, is why I still got marked right for saying "We are good"...
They only recently added this as an acceptable translation. Probably because many people say, "We're good." when they mean, "We are well."
Not sure why "We are going well." is not an approved translation! I certainly use it in everyday English, and don't think it's incorrect ...
Probably because it isn't the usual English idiom, so no one's entered it yet. Try reporting it via the "Report a problem" tab next time you get it -- if you don't want to lose a heart on it, you can check "I have another problem" and just explain.
It's correcting you for improper English. You understood the German just fine.
Because good is an adjective. It describes what you are doing not how you are doing it. To do good is to do things that are good like caring for the poor.
But that is not the question. It is like if we ask Wie geht es? and we answer Es geht mir gut...in this case though it is an answer when more than one person is being addressed ..I think of the question "Wie geht es ihnen?" when you are perhaps addressing a husband and wife and the husband answers for both.
Because 'es' ('it') is the subject of the sentence. Literally, "It goes well for us."
Most helpful, br. I did not understand what "es" was doing in that sentence.
Because "uns es gut" literally means "us it good". You need a verb in a sentence. ;)
DarcX's answer makes sense, but as for your answer I just wanted to confirm that you're saying you can't/shouldn't use "gut" to to answer someone if they ask how you're doing?
Well that would be acceptable technically it'd just sound odd to a native German. If you said "Wir sind gut" to a German it'd be like someone coming up to you saying "It is going good to me." It works grammatically; it just sounds very... foreign. :P
Why doesn't German have a different word for doing and going? Very confusing
This is an idiom. German does have a different word for doing and going.
"It is going well for us," is a literal translation that works in english.
I don't understand why the sentence is structured the way that it is ie "Uns geht es gut" what are the grammar rules that make this correct? I would have thought it would be "Es geht uns gut"
What makes it correct is this: Uns - dative/accusative pronoun: this indicates that it is being used as a(n in)direct object. // Geht - 3rd person, singular conjugation of the verb gehen. // Es - 3rd person, singular pronoun in the nominative case: it can only be used as the subject of a sentence. // Gut - An adverb meaning "well" (in this case it is an adverb, whereas it can also be a predicate adjective). // Because these words have such a specific use, their order isn't very important as it is in English, and the order of "Uns geht es gut" just so happens to be the preferred order in German!
I understand that it is a typical German structure, and I guess I must review it, even if it seems strange to me. 'es' is the subject, it is ok.
If I use this structure again, is the following sentence correct ? Mich geht es gut ( to say : I am fine )
The word is order is fine, but it would 'mir' not 'mich'. 'Mich' is accusative 'me', but what we need is dative 'to/for me.' So you could say, "Mir geht es gut."
Thanks a lot, I can eventually understand why the sentence shouldn't be here in the accusative section...but should be in the dative section. Ok, by the way, you make me understand what dative is. Thanks again.
