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- "Keiner ist stärker."
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How come "none are stronger" is not accepted? If it is not correct how does one say "none are stronger" in German?
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Because the voice recording says 'Keiner ist starker'; not 'Keiner sind starker'. Also I believe 'Keiner' is termed as a singular noun. Someone correct me please if I'm wrong!
"None" is singular, so it should be "None is stronger". This might be the sole issue.
"None" can be used with either a singular or a plural verb. (Ok, you might have meant 'This "none" is singular ...' , but at the moment '"None" is singular ...' comes across to me as the general statement which is a known misconception, which is worth highlighting by a couple of sourced quotes.)
"A common misconception is that none is always singular because it is short for no one. However, it is just as likely to mean not any, implying a plural." -- http://www.onlinegrammar.com.au/top-10-grammar-myths-none-always-takes-a-singular-verb/
"It is sometimes held that none can only take a singular verb, never a plural verb: none of them is coming tonight rather than none of them are coming tonight. There is little justification, historical or grammatical, for this view. None is descended from Old English nān meaning ‘not one’ and has been used for around a thousand years with both a singular and a plural verb, depending on the context and the emphasis needed." -- http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/none
Though, that said, you could be right to highlight the plurality as the reason "None are ..." might not be accepted by the course contributors, because the German version is singular. However, another comment states "None is ..." is also not being accepted.
I suppose it is possible that when the course contributors review this, they think there is ambiguity with "none". For (a faintly ludicrous) example: I have seven nails to hold a shelf to a wall. (You can tell I'm a bad DIYer, right?) I ask, "I don't want to use all my nails. Should I use two? three?"
"None is stronger," says the person I asked, and instead hands me a tube of No More Nails.
(It's probably something else.)
The short answer here should be: if you want to say it in plural, you would use "sind" insteas of "ist".
Am I right, or "keiner" wouldn't work with "sind"?
I think you are right about sind, but according to google translate it seems keiner does not work with sind and "None are stronger" translate: "Keine sind stärker".
Are you sure 'none' is singular? How about 'none of you are coming?' That's is sounds correct to me. But I may be wrong....
Both niemand and keiner are indefinite pronouns. The two are synonymous, but I'm not sure if they can be used interchangeably. Kein- can be used as a pronoun with specific reference to a group of people or things. So, kein- effectively means "none of them" instead of "no one."
Example of niemand: "Niemand ist da," which means "No one is t/here."
Example of kein: "Wir haben viele Männer im Büro, aber keiner kann Fussball spielen," which means "We have many men in the office, but none [of them] can play football."
It is important to note that I am a student of German, not a native; my advice may not be entirely accurate. If I've said something that is incorrect, please fix it.
http://courseware.nus.edu.sg/e-daf/cwm/la3201gr/e8/indef/indefman.htm
I think your explanation is excellent, especially your example of kein, which shows an example where kein is a much better candidate than its synonym.
Of course, though, the question still remains as to why niemand wasn’t accepted for this specific translation of “no one is stronger”, where either one should be fine...
I think it is a very fine distinction. "Niemand" is an absolute, "nobody," whereas "keiner" is compared to the one that is strongest. I don't know how clear this is...
Ariail does a pretty good job explaining the absolutism of niemand versus the relativism of kein, actually… check out the examples above. :)
I agree. Based on the link provided, niemand should be correct because it's not referring to a specific group of people or things. Now, if this were a sentence taken from a paragraph talking about a specific group of people or things, I can see how that makes sense.
This is also what I wrote, and checked my trusty tiny dictionary, which agrees, so I will put in a report of an error, and we will see. Can I recommend that fellow users check out possible errors and report them, as this is a tool in constant development and we all benefit from the corrections.
5 months later and I still got rejected on "none is stronger." Wouldn't this be the answer if you are in a store looking at tape or glue and ask if a certain one is strongest?
why is it "keiner" and not "kein" or "keine"? I assume that it's genitive but I don't see how. this seems like it should be nominative, no?
My German coach once told me that the implied scenario for anyone, someone, no one etc is always the third person masculine singular. So I like to mentally replace the pronoun with "he" or "his" to accord for the grammar rules
Would someone please address jmulqueenxs question as to the case and gender of kein in this example?
I believe "keiner" here is simply nominative masculine singular, with kein- being used as an indefinite pronoun (rather than an article), which is why it takes the -er ending. The implied situation is one in which, for instance, you have two men. The question is asked, Welcher Mann ist staerker? (Which man is stronger?) Possible answers include:
Kein Mann ist staerker. (Kein is an article used in the nominative masculine singular, thus no ending.) In English, more or less "Neither man is stronger."
Keiner ist staerker. (KeinER is now a pronoun, replacing the noun, thus the ending). "Neither is stronger."
KeinER might also be used in this sort of sentence if the antecedents aren't clear, or if the antecedents are mixed in grammatical gender...but I'm less sure about that.
If the implied situation were different, if you were clearly looking at two women (Frau - feminine gender on the noun) or feminine gender nouns and asking which is stronger, I believe you could answer
Keine ist staerker.
Does 'Keiner' used in this way always refer to people? How would you say 'Nothing is stronger'?
I don't see an answer to this. Why "keiner" not "kein" ? I fear the answer to this since German particle endings remain a giant scary mystery where I'm mostly guessing.
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I thought keiner was for objects, as in "Nothing is stronger"? Is there a rule for it to mean different things, or was I just wrong?
Nichts is for objects.
Nichts ist stärker als die Liebe - nothing is stronger than love
"None is stronger" is wrong but "No 1 is stronger" is corrent? Seriously Duolingo?
- 273
The voice recording exercise said 'Keiner ist staerker'; the correct translation from Duo was 'None is stronger'. I'm now reading that some of you are having this marked as wrong! How is this possible?
Why is it keiner? When using kein directly with a noun, does it just decline with that noun's gender?
When listening to the male audio both fast and slow I can't hear any ending. I am sure he says keine.
Why is the sound is gone when I want to hear the word there is no sound and some sentence just one word and the rest of words no sound Please fix the problem
German natives, is the pronunciation of the umlaut a here correct? I thought the umlaut a was more like a cross between the vowel sounds in English "hay" and "bed." Here it sounds like the a in "ark." Danke.
Why keiner instead of niemand for no one? I typed nothing is stronger and it was wrong
I put nothing is stronger, depending on context i don't see why the sentence should not be refering to something other than a person.
Why could the translation be "Kleiner ist stärker. = Smaller is stronger. ? For does not Kleiner translate to smaller ?
You just misread "keiner" as "kleiner." Your answer would be correct otherwise. Keiner means "nobody."
