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- "I am against her."
"I am against her."
Translation:Ich bin gegen sie.
34 Comments
Why 'sie' and not 'ihr?' I was under the impression that both mean 'her.'
Because 'gegen' goes with akkusativ. "her" in akkusativ is "sie". 'ihr' is in dativ.
FUDGEBOW is a mnemonic to remember the accusative prepositions
für
um
durch
gegen
entland
bis
ohne
wider
entlang instead of entlandI think. Really nice to remember those prepositions, even though English isn't my native tongue!
Are you saying complicated grammar "rules" as in: "complicated grammar is fantastic!"?
I believe the precise sentiment being expressed is: "Copulating with complicated grammar is fantastic!"
Grammar (Grammatik) is feminine in German. In the accusative it would be sie . Which gives particular meaning to "I am against her" in this example.
Why is it complicated? Wait until we'll have to study the various tenses of irregular verbs...
I am confused by this as well, from everything I have seen so far the second verb is usually placed at the end of the sentence after the object.
"Gegen" is a preposition here, not a verb. Some German prepositions follow the object, but this isn't one of them:
An aside:
Some linguists call "prepostions" that come after the object "postpostions", but "preposition" is still the most common term for both of these kinds of words in English:
What the hell? Isn't "sie" nominative? How can the sentence have two subjects? This doesn't make any sense to me...
If you go to: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/de/Accusative-Pronouns and scroll down to "Tips and notes" it gives a list of pronouns in the accusative case.
The bottom line is that sie (she), sie (they) and Sie (you formal) do not change in the accusative. It definitely makes it confusing! So the sample sentence, "Ich bin gegen sie" Could mean either, "I am against her" or I am against them."
I now look back on this comment I made two months ago and wonder how I ever found that confusing. lol. It seems obvious to me now. =P
I love this comment because it shows how it all sinks in, even when we feel like we're lost and confused. In every language, this comment translates to "stick with it!"
No, "kontra" does not work here. Best translation of "kontra" might be the English "versus", but you do not really use "kontra" very often in German. The one exception is the saying "Pro und Kontra" (the for and against i.e. advantages and disadvantages), which is quite popular.
Interesting that kontra doesn't work in this situation; whereas in Italian, the best word to use here would be contro, which sounds very similar.
What? This is totally distinct from everything so far we have learnt.
Some lessons in grammar would be useful because its just fetting confusing now.
The German and the English structures are exactly the same here, word for word, so this particular sentence shouldn't be much of a stretch.
But there are German grammar sites on the internet. For example:
