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Wann bist du geboren? (German) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5784 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 65 of 71 17 January 2014 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah. When I was trying to think of "wann" questions with the "sein-passiv" above, my brain kept giving me sentences like "Wann warst du deprimiert?" that I had to discount as deprimiert is probably an adjective here. Even in English I can't always be 100% certain that something that looks like a past participle isn't in fact an adjective (amd my understanding of English grammar is pretty decent), let alone in German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4835 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 66 of 71 17 January 2014 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||
I understand your point but I don't think this is the confusion here. The original question was why do people say "Wann sind Sie geboren"? In this case geboren is clearly a passive, not an adjective and I think we all recognized that. The question is then: Is it really all there is to that question? In other words, is the sein-passiv being used there? Or is there an implied worden that might not be used in colloquial speech and the question is in reality an example of werden-passiv? The latter makes sense to me because it seems (and correct me if you as a native don't have this impression) that sein-passiv questions have to do with time intervals and werden-passiv questions with points in time. The following should illustrate my point: Imagine a city has been destroyed in the past and remained destroyed for a while. Wann wurde die Stadt zerstört? I would answer this with the point in time in which the destructive process occurred. Say, January 17, 2000. Wann war die Stadt zerstört? I would say that it was in a state that could be considered destroyed for 1/2/5 years or whatever. @Random review: please check the edit on my previous post. That might clear some of the confusion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5784 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 67 of 71 17 January 2014 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Marco, I already did check your edit and it did clear up some confusion. Thats why I had voted your post
useful. I think Doitsujin's post may have been meant for me. At any rate, it was a helpful addition to the debate. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4291 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 68 of 71 17 January 2014 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that much foncusion stems from the fact that English has no equivalent of the
distinction sein/zijn + participle compared to haben/hebben + participle. In English, "When were you born" would equivalate to usage of sein/zijn for the instant that the birth occurred, würden/worden would probably be untranslatable in English directly, but if I had to choose an English translation it would mean, "When was the time wherein you were in the process of being born?", which is very awkward as a question, because very infrequently would one want to ask something like that, and the English wording is very cumbersome. Also, würden/worden in German and Dutch are usually used as passives when it is meant that someone else does an action upon the subject. Like in Dutch, "Ik werd opgebeld." the question that follows would probably be, "Door wie?" or, "By whom?". So using würden/worden in this particular case might also imply to be born by someone else, i.e., "When were you being born by someone else?" Edited by 1e4e6 on 17 January 2014 at 11:51pm 1 person has 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 69 of 71 18 January 2014 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Zustandspassiv doesn't exclusively relate to time intervals: "Wann sind die Läden geöffnet?" - "Montag."
This is clearly a point in time. Also, Vorgangspassiv can relate to a time span: "Wann wirst du geprüft?" - "Von 3 bis 4 Uhr." So it seems to me, you're overthinking the whole problem, MarcoLeal. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4835 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 70 of 71 18 January 2014 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, yeah, I do tend to do that :D Let's just say I think those examples do force me to broaden my "theory" a little but don't really counter it lest I write another essay about something so small :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5561 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 71 of 71 20 January 2014 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just to add to the confusion/enlightenment, I heard on the news today "Soundso ist tot. Er wurde 80 Jahre alt."
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