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- "Meine Finger habe ich behalt…
81 Comments
2232
Being picky here, but samurai can at worst utterly kill people. Yakuza can expect it from affiliated who failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yubitsume
184
Lass mich dir eine Frage stellen: Glaubst du immer noch, dass gute Soldaten gute Könige machen?
Jeder weiß, was Stannis ist; Er inspiriert keine Liebe oder Loyalität. Er ist kein König. Ich bin.
In German, you can start a sentence with the subject or the object. Both "Meine Finger habe ich behalten" and "Ich habe meine Finger behalten" are correct. The only difference lies in emphasis - if you start the sentence with the object (meine Finger), you emphasize these words: I kept my FINGERS (but I lost a leg).
188
The verb is ALWAYS in second place. If the main verb is at the end, the helper verb is in second (hat, ist)
108
I have always been so proud of my German heritage but I have to honestly say that the DL sentences are so weird (the idioms for example) I'm beginning to wonder whether or not I should even mention that I'm of German descent lol!!
1175
When a German person advises you not to buy something because it is faulty he will say "halten die finger weg". A bit like our expression "I got my fingers burnt with that investment".
The noun "Finger" is the same in the singular and the plural in German, but you can tell from the posessive determiner, i.e. the form of "my".
"Finger" is a masculine noun and the direct object (accusative case) in this sentence.
meinen Finger (my finger; masculine singular accusative)
meine Finger (my fingers; plural accusative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_pronouns#Possessive_pronouns
449
This is a daft sentence, unless it is idiomatic - in which case there should be some explanation.
1288
There's an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, "Song of the South" (1950s), where Peter Lorre's character tries to cut off one of Stene McQueen's character's fingers. Very suspenseful.
Maybe this has to do (forgive my hazy memory of the anecdote) with the one war where the French archers had their fingers cut off when they were taken prisoner, and after the war ended, French people would do what we refer to as "flipping off" the Brits to show them that they still had their fingers, meaning they hadn't been taken prisoner and still had the fight in them (or something.)
882
I think it only really makes sense in a situation when you could potentially lose fingers. Perhaps after you've climbed Mount Everest: "I may have lost two of my toes to frostbite, but I kept my fingers".
2232
Duo teaching us good sentences to kidnap people (in a few other exercises) and keeping fingers: now I am ready for the German branch of the yakuza!
Maybe this sentence is referencing this: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0nswF0mO504 http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgi6Qcv5Ck
FANTASTIC... but try this one. It's a nice little German language lesson and the consequences of thumb-sucking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0553T0PXMWk
99
Maybe this sentence doesn't translate well? Reminds me of reading subtitles of Japanese shows, and how the expression is lost when translated to English...
The speaker should make clear whether she is saying 'mein' or 'meine'. It is the only way of knowing if she is referring to one or more fingers.
1159
I thought she said "GEhalten" which makes about as much sense, "I held my fingers". I listened again and it really sounds like "GE-" not be-, esp. on the slow version
317
The verb is "behalten" (to keep/retain), and it has a non-separable prefix "be". Such verbs never receive a "ge-" prefix when forming the perfect tense. (Further examples: "verfolgen" -> "verfolgt", "beginnen" -> "begonnen", "entfernen"-> "entfernt".)