[Course Forum] German 1-7 by Memrise

Official Memrise Courses German
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Hi Katrin,

“The have”: Sorry, never heard as an English learner of this.

If the sentence needs a subject, and it does, “Sie”, meaning “they” is necessary. “Sie haben” means “They have”: Yes, correct, plural 5. person conjugation.

This is the plural form of the definite article “the”: You are right that the article “the” can mean der/die/das/den.

But not only this.
We have to accept that single words can have multiple meanings; this also drives me often crazy in Portuguese grammar and translations :wink:

Then there is the Pronoun Derjenige/Diejenige/Dasjenige.

More Pronouns for “die”:
https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=de&tl=en&text=die

Which (die/welche), that (die, jener, welche), who (die, welche).

If you think about this different context and you finally drive away from “die” only being used as an article, it maybe gets more clear.

Well, my native language is hard to explain when I never had to formally study it on Duolingo or the German grammar somewhere else :wink:

I hope the other referenced article which irridmemorizza had linked could explain it a bit better.

Memrise is nice to review words and to see new (different) phrases/sentences examples in action which grammar you have at best formally learned elsewhere so you can finally recognize patterns and it makes “click”; but with grammar and missing explanations (there are no MEMS to select from in the offical 1-7 courses) it is important to have other resources in parallel.

www.lingvist.com (you can learn your first 3000 words for free) also has a grammar popup panel which you can show when you make an error. The grammar explanations and verb tense tables are longer…but you would need to take the time to read them so cram learning new words does not work as good.

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The essential problem is that the grammar lesson that would explain demonstrative pronouns doesn’t exist. And the English translation given is “They have.”

Poor structure and confusing.

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German is not an easy language to learn and may even be difficult for a German speaker (I am one that struggled with German and I grew up in Germany). We have grammar rules but also have lots of exceptions to the rules. :thinking:

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German level 1 - error.

Text keeps reading Thrity-three instead of thirty-three.

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Which course? - can you post a link, please.

If it’s an official MemRise one then I can move your post to the appropriate thread.

(Have you posted under the German language heading?)

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German, level 1

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No, not level 1, series 1.

Finally found it.

It is the German 1 series course, level 10 “Vocab booster: More numbers”.

English-US has it wrong: https://www.memrise.com/course/2142010/german-1/10/

English-UK looks fine (on the web).

When you report it in the official German1-7 thread, it would help to be as much precise as possible.

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I assumed this was a Typo error (not speech) which could easily be corrected by MemRise.

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Hi @KatrinNissen, have you reported this error to the new thread, or would you like me to transfer them and then close this one afterwards?

Cc @Thomas.Heiss

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Please transfer. Thanks.

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I’ve transferred them :slight_smile: and closed and unlisted the other thread for you.
Thanks for your help Thomas.

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Does it allow both “Die” and “Sie” as correct answers or just “Die”? If it’s the second case I agree with you.

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Again, the problem is that the English translation says "They have ". There’s only one equivalent for this: “Sie haben”. “Die” makes no sense then.

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From what the other more knowledgeable people on this forum have said, “Die” can have two meanings/translations. “Die” can mean “the” which you have already learnt. But it can also be used as “they”. There isn’t always a one-to-one correspondence between German words and English words.

A good example that is similar is “das” which you also know as “the”. But it also means “that” and you’ve probably already being using it in both forms?

“Die” does not equal “The”. It only matches some of the time and at other times matches “they”

“Sie” = “They” or “You” (Formal)
“Die” = “The” or “They”

Type both “Sie haben sogar einen Wellnessbereich.” and “Die haben sogar einen Wellnessbereich.” into google translate and they both translate to the same thing.

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Which is why I’m saying you should be able to use either “Die” or “Sie” as a correct answer when you translate from English into German.

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Thanks for the explainer; this makes perfect sense. English is very much lacking in the pronouns area, I’m afraid, which can makes subtleties such as these hard to pick up on from an outside perspective.

I suppose we could liken it somewhat to a nice, plural usage of ‘one’ or ‘man’ to refer in English to an unknown person? I guess I would say, if speaking of some folks running a place, either ‘they’ or ‘management’ or 'the people who run … ’ etc. … you know, a specific nonspecificity, which actually seems like the more awkward way to go about it. Having a catch all pronoun seems simpler.

English is dumb sometimes – it’s a great impediment to have it as a native language, lol.

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Hey everyone!

We see that “die haben sogar einen Wellnessbereich” has created a lot of confusion. First of all, sorry for that (and the delayed reply), we definitely understand where the confusion is coming from! But also thanks for all the German speakers for helping out with explaining why it is correct to say it like this :raised_hands:

When we created the content, it was one of our main objectives to make it sound as natural as possible, accepting that sometimes this can lead to temporary confusion, when not everything is following a set or known grammatical structure or previously given translation. We did create the content of each chapter with a focus on a few grammar structures, which would then be explained in the grammar levels if required, but there are sometimes single or few items with new grammar structures that are overall too advanced to explain at that stage, but still the most commonly used form and worth learning as a set phrase or example sentence without necessarily needing to know the grammar behind it.

In this case, you have previously learned that “they” should be “sie” and that “die” is an (or the female) article for “the”. However, the phrase we wanted to teach in that level is something that is supposed to express a phrase like “hey look, they even have a spa” (imagine someone is looking at a hotel on a hotel booking site). In that case, as some have already mentioned here, German uses “die” as a pronoun.

We’ve also added “sie haben sogar einen Wellnesbereich” as an alternative for English UK and US so that you can also choose to answer this way, which will hopefully mitigate the confusion.

Thanks again for helping out with the explanations!
Happy learning,
Linh

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‘forty’ systematically written ‘fourty’…

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Yikes! That is painful!

Which course are you talking about, by the way? Can you post a link? A course called “German 1” sounds like an official memrise course, not a Decks community course.

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Oops - it is the official Memrise course German 1 - I must have got the wrong forum

Adrian

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@ADG89 I moved your problem into this topic. Hopefully will be resolved soon by @linh.vu. Happy Memrising. :tada:

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