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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4083 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes  Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 1 of 126 05 April 2014 at 10:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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1. Ihr wurde der Führerschein abgenommen.
The translation says "They took away her driving licence". a. Should the first word not be "Sie"? b. Should it not be den Führerschein? c. Would the meaning change if instead of "wurde" we had the appropriate form of "hat"? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5321 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 2 of 126 05 April 2014 at 11:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
No. "Abnehmen" requires the Dative, even if it's used in a passive voice sentence.
No. You'll have to rephrase the sentence as an active voice sentence, if you want to use "den": Sie haben ihr den Führerschein abgenommen.
You could use an impersonal (active voice) construction with "hat:" Man hat(te) ihr den Führerschein abgenommen. Edited by Doitsujin on 05 April 2014 at 9:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 3 of 126 05 April 2014 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Maybe, a more literal translation will help you understand the sentence. Literally, it means:
She was taken away her driver's license. So, this sentence is in the passive voice. That's why it is "der Führerschein" and "ihr". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 4 of 126 05 April 2014 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Remember that in your sentence, the ACTUAL agent of the action (the person that takes away the driver's license), is left out. That is one of the only reasons people use the passive in language.
The agent of the action in an active sentence is the subject (nominative) The object that is directly the target of the agent's action is the direct object (accusative) The person affected or that is the "patient" ("suffers" or "enjoys") the action of the verb is the indirect object (dative) Thus in the active: Man hat ihr den Führerschein abgenommen (man = agent that takes away the license; DEN Führerschein = the object directly affected by the verb, it is the thing taken away; ihr = the person "suffering" this action, usually called the "patient") You could replace "man" with "Die Polizei", if you knew it was them who took the person's license away. Thus: Die Polizei hat ihr den Führerschein abgenonmmen. This helps make the Transformation to the passive more clear. In the passive, the direct object or accusative becomes the subject or Nominative. Thus, Führerschein becomes the subject: Der Führerschein... The dative, or the "patient", the person that suffers the taking away of the license, cannot be changed, EVER. Thus: Der Führerschein wurde ihr abgenommen. In German that sounds a bit ackward because German word order tends to favor pronouns before actual nouns. "Ihr" is a dative pronoun, "der Führerschein" is an actual noun. Therefore Germans will usually place "ihr" first, which places the grammatical subject "der Führerschein" to follow after (thus triggering inverted verb 2nd order) Ihr wurde der Führerschein abgenommen. It is this word order that at times throws us non-natives off and takes some time to get used to. We think it should be the subject when it is not. Finally, the subject or nominative of the formerly active sentence (the Agent of the verb), COULD be introduced with "von", if you knew who it was. Ihr wurde der Führerschein (von der Polizei) abgenommen. I hope the step-by-step helps. Edited by outcast on 05 April 2014 at 7:09pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4083 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 5 of 126 06 April 2014 at 10:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks Josquin, Doitsujin and outcast.
Outcast, that write up is REALLY good! I think also the translation was wrong, it should perhaps have said "Her driving license was taken away". Edited by Gemuse on 06 April 2014 at 10:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4083 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 6 of 126 11 April 2014 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Another question:
2. Besonders gern hat er Mathmatik. I'm mulling over the word order. Are the following correct: 2b. Besonders hat er gern Mathmatik. 2c. Besonders Mathmatik hat er gern. 2d. Besonders gern Mathmatik har er. Another question: 3. Nach dem Aufstehen mache ich mein Bett, putze mir die Zähne. Why is there a mir in there? Should it not be "putze ich die Zähne"? Also, is the following correct: 3b. Nach dem Aufstehen putze mir die Zähne. Edited by Gemuse on 11 April 2014 at 7:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5321 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 7 of 126 12 April 2014 at 12:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Only 2c is acceptable. The rest sounds like Yoda talk. BTW, contrary to some textbooks, German does not have a more free word order than other languages. I.e., your "throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks" approach simply doesn't work. At your current proficiency level you're much better off accepting the examples in your textbook(s) than inventing new versions that usually don't make sense.
No. "To brush one's teeth" is a reflexive verb in German, unless you brush someone else's teeth.
No, verbs usually require a subject in German: Nach dem Aufstehen putze ich mir die Zähne. Edited by Doitsujin on 12 April 2014 at 7:24am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 126 12 April 2014 at 2:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Verbs linked to grooming and doings things to your own body parts (and things related to them):
In English they generally follow the pattern (transitive) verb + possessive pronoun + body part In German, many of them follow the pattern (reflexive) verb + dative pronoun + definite article + body part sich die Zähne putzen, sich die Haare kämmen/bürsten, sich das Bein/den Arm brechen, sich den Magen verderben, sich die Schuhe anziehen, ... In some cases it's possible to use the same pattern as in English, but often it has a slightly different meaning or sounds weird, as if you wanted to point out, for example, that you already finished assisting your kids with brushing their teeth but you still have to brush your own teeth. You can think of the dative pronoun in this pattern as "for the benefit of (person)" or "with an impact on (person)". It is possible to say, for example, "Ich putze mir meine Zähne" but because you already marked the sentence for (your own) benefit, also marking the teeth as belonging to you makes it sound ... odd. Like saying "Look! These are my teeth! These teeth that I am brushing, they are mine!" I agree with Doitsujin on the word order thing, though I'd like to add that it's not actually words, but parts of a sentence that can be moved around following a number of rules. The verb in that sentence is not "haben", it's "gernhaben", and separable verbs follow ... interesting rules. These are things you should be able to find in a good learner's grammar. Edited by Bao on 12 April 2014 at 1:43pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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