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The word "Mensch" can be singular or collective (e.g. person or people). Because it is masculine dative, it becomes "dem Menschen" (in nominative- der Mensch). Vom= von dem, so vom Menschen.
Can anyone explain why it is "vom" and not "von". The explanation from duolingo was that "Menschen" is a masculine word (and then of course in the Dative case it gets an 'm' at the end), but to me it seems more like the plural form of "Mensch". I'm a bit confused about this one.
Oh yes haha sorry, look here in the weak inflection section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declension
It states how plural nouns in the dative add -en in the chart. I hope this helps! (unless you figured it out three months ago haha)
The N-declension is something that confuses me quite often :) The difference between plural and singular becomes less apparent. Thanks for the info, hopefully it will become clearer soon. I guess the fact that "people" is plural, made me go for plural in the German sentence as well.
It confuses me also. I made the same mistake as you as well. Not to fret though, we will learn this! :)
Should not it be "von den Menschen" or just "von Menschen" if "Menschen" is plural?
It's not plural, "Menschen" is a singular noun with N-declension. See here for more info: http://germanforenglishspeakers.com/wp/nouns-articles/ii-5-weak-nouns-the-n-declension/
But it is confusing, because in other sentences "Menschen" might be plural...
Yeah, that's the part that sucks about this sentence: "People" is uncountable and therefore in English a plural. "Menschen" is countable and can be either. I'm not sure why using it as a plural is regarded as wrong in this case, maybe it is a standard German expression?? I don't know. Maybe the native speakers can help us out with that.
As far as I understand, "Mensch" = "man", "person" or "human", and "Menschen" = people. Something in this sentence is wrong: either it should be "von den Menschen" and "on people" or "vom Menschen" and "on man" or "on person" or "on human being".
