"I speak to the people of my time."

Translation: Ich spreche zu den Menschen meiner Zeit.

[siruso]

A Roman would find this sentence redundant. You have a case system AND you need the preposition? What's the point

[kidej]

I also don't get this. Can anyone explain why this is the case here?

[odi_et_amo]

Latin has cases and prepositions (two-way prepositions too). A Roman wouldn't feel too out of his element with German. Adjective declension would probably be as infuriating for him as it is for me.

[salspaugh]

Why isn't "Ich spreche mit die Leute meiner Zeit" acceptable? In a previous sentence (something about "My wife talks to the plants"), it was translated using sprechen and mit. Also, is Leute not a valid translation for "people"?

[odi_et_amo]

mit takes a dative so it would be "mit der Leute". Maybe here there is also difference between "talking with" and "talking to". I don't remember the sentence about talking to plants, but it would make sense that someone would talk to plants, but not with plants... I would think this question would be analogous though. Not sure.

[salspaugh]

Hm so if it's dative, then wouldn't it be "mit den Leuten"? Like shown here: http://german.about.com/library/blcase_dat.htm Thanks for the tip.

[odi_et_amo]

Whoops! My bad. Yes, since it's always plural. Good catch.

[MelvinCheung]

is ´Zeit´ in Dative and ´Menschen´ in Genitive?

[-Herbstzeitlose-]

Actually "Menschen" is in dative and "Zeit" is in genitive.

[JackYakov]

what the sentence really means?
it means "I speak to the people about my time"?

[JackYakov]

could "ich spreche mit der Leute meiner Zeit" be right?