Not learning nouns with articles. If the noun’s article is der or das, the dative pronoun is ihm. Mixing up ihm and ihr in dative.
If I wanted to do a slight dig I might refer to a guy as a pretty boy (like Arnold S’s girly man reference). For me – American (and older) – pretty is feminine. You can describe a guy as pretty, but then it is a “girlish” appearance (and generally not really a complement). I can find a lot of instances of “pretty guy” for instance.
It sounds weird to refer to the bartender as pretty, as only feminine things can be pretty, while guys are handsome. The verb phrase is “berichten von”, so a native speaker would not be confused about the topic vs subject based on context, unless it’s REALLY vague. In fact, even some people from Cologne did it and it’s super odd to me because in Berlin we don’t do it. It always feel a bit strange to me aphrodite casino (I’m English) to use er/sie to refer to objects not people, but much less so to use der/die.
Learn German
- I was doing my normal reading and listening and all of a sudden there was this person – an “er” – in the next sentence.
- Get your head around that & you can move on swiftly to learning which nouns are either of the 3 & why they need the correct version of the articles.
- Der, die, das have an element of pointing, while er, sie, es are super neutral.
- — You are coming.ihr (dative of sie)her / to herIch gebe ihr das Buch.
- The elves in Lord of the Rings might be described as pretty.
- And we only have one, so the assumption is that it’s the more important element.
- Das Mädchen (the girl) is neuter because of the diminutive suffix -chen, so grammatically it is es, not sie.
Ob der da ist oder nicht ist mir total egal. But using ‘der’ or ‘die’ can sound a bit distant or dismissive compared to ‘er’ or ‘sie’. ‘der’ and ‘die’ are more pointy and work nicely in sentence-initial spots.
- But this is really more of a feeling than a rule.
- Or, maybe a gay guy talking about another gay guy.
- In casual speech, Germans often switch to er or sie based on the child’s actual gender, but the grammatical rule says es.
- The verb phrase is “berichten von”, so a native speaker would not be confused about the topic vs subject based on context, unless it’s REALLY vague.
- And the best way to feel that, I think, is to go back over the examples for it vs that that we had.
- I think the most important aspect is definitely the pointy-ness though and in the right context, that can be used to make your sentence less ambiguous.
- Ihm is dative for both masculine and neuter nouns.
Your Comments and Questions
Please note that in English we use the pronoun it when we talk about ‘objects’ which are not equivalent to people. If you have a noun with a feminine article (die) then the article and the noun can be replaced with sie. Adjust the playback speed for audio examples — still sounds fine down to about 70%. Here, “sie” would sound weird, and “die” doesn’t sound negative or distanced.
er and sie vs der and die
400+ quizzes, games, and AI pronunciation practice — all in one app. Conjugations can seem confusing, but just listen to the lesson and answer the question and you’ll get them. Repeat this lesson until you can easily answer the questions. If you have a noun with a masculine article (der) then the article and the noun can be replaced with er. Hidden-language examples are blurred — click a blurred example to reveal it. Looking forward to the practice session.
And we only have one, so the assumption is that it’s the more important element. Here, it’s not 100% clear if I was told BY Thomas or ABOUT Thomas. This could be a real subject, but the double “von” in the sentence does sound shitty. It’s the “topic”, a prepositional object. The reader is in the dative as recipient. “wird … berichtet” is a passive construction in my interpretation.
If you pay attention to native speakers, you’ll hear der, die, das and den and dem a LOT at the beginning of sentences like these. So der and die are more pointy than er and sie. The difference in pointy-ness is the same. The only real difference to English is the second example here, where in English that and it work, while in German das is way more idiomatic than es.
— She is coming.sie (+ plural verb)theySie kommen. The word sie is famously overloaded in German. In casual speech, Germans often switch to er or sie based on the child’s actual gender, but the grammatical rule says es. This feels strange to English speakers, but it is grammatically correct. Der Computer funktioniert nicht.
But what matters more here is that you take a minute to check how the different examples FEEL with the different words. Or it’s kind of generic like in the last example. While it either directly stands for a noun (implied like “weird behavior” or explicit like “the book” ). But this is really more of a feeling than a rule.
There is one on “Das habe ich auf bemerkt” That should probably be an ‘Auch’ And please do make a quiz or exercise about this topic! But I have a question – this also works for plural, right? But in Berlin, we don’t do that. The question mark immediately after the name is implied. Sounds fine to my ear but probably weird to the north German ear.