"The doctors do not know the cause of his illness."

Translation: Lægerne kender ikke årsagen til hans sygdom.

[Bluthund]

Would "ved" work here? In German (with the same ved/kender distinction) it would.

[tddk]

"Lægerne ved ikke årsagen til hans sygdom" sounds good to me.

[Ifritism]

Ah, not really, I don't think. 'Lægerne ved ikke hvad årsagen til hans sygdom er', would work, but 'ved ikke årsagen'? Sounds anglo to me.

[Bluthund]

Oh, some hours ago I asked if "Lægerne ved ikke hvad årsagen til hans sygdom er" would be a correct translation and now I realize that you gave that exact translation already one week ago. I feel stupid now, haha. I think I read your answer unconsciously and "stole" your translation without even noticing it myself :)

[eagersnap]

Yeah absolutely. You'd need to rephrase the sentence to use "ved"

[Bluthund]

So I guess you would need a subordinate clause to use "ved", maybe something like "Lægerne ved ikke hvad årsagen til hans sygdom er"? <- Does this sound correct? :-/

[eagersnap]

Yeah, that sentence is good. You are right, that "ved" must be followed by a clause like "hvad, hvor, hvornår, hvem, om" etc.

[DieLegende2]

There might be some dialects where it works, but to me "Die Ärzten wissen die Ursache seiner Krankheit nicht" sounds very strange. You could make it "wissen nicht um..." to make it work, but that's a different verb then and doesn't help the analogy.

[Helene666293]

still no correction (as usually !?) of the 'dictionary on hover....'
i wrote first kender but then read the 'diction. hints and 'corrected' into ved....
it happens to me several times and it makes me all these times angry...

[MitziAnder1]

So did I.

[Patsy536249]

On using ved