I need help from someone who is smarter than me! (Level 46 ‘Talking About People 3’)

Community-Created Courses German
1

Hello everyone

I have a question on Level 46 ‘Talking About People 3’

I am confused with the following sentences to learn:

Unser Vater liest die Zeitung sehr gerne
our father loves to read the newspaper

meine Schwester liest die Nachrichten sehr gerne
my sister loves to read the news

meine Mutter liest sehr gerne Zeitschriften
my mother loves to read magazines

In the first two sentences, the correct answer finishes with the adverbs ‘sehr gerne’ at the end. So why in the third example does the sentence end with the noun?

My answer to the third question was; meine Mutter liest die Zeitschriften sehr gerne. Why is this incorrect?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I’m sure the answer is obvious but after a 7 day streak, I think my brain is frazzled!

2

Hi DeanFaccini,

short answer:
“Meine Mutter liest die Zeitschriften sehr gerne” is a correct sentence!
Level 46, which course do you mean?

3

If you are talking about the Memrise courses then try posting your question here:

http://community.memrise.com/t/course-forum-german-1-7-by-memrise?source_topic_id=3584

My current belief is that the ‘‘sehr gerne’’ can be in either position, and the course should accept both formats as correct, but I’m a beginner at German and am just repeating what I was told when this issue came up in the old course forums.

1 Like
4

Hi DeanFaccini,

there is indeed a lot of variability in how German sentences are structured. We usually try to be consistent, but you should also be able to put in both variants?
Lemme know if you have any other questions!

5

Thanks for your reply redux2. I thought it should be a correct sentence. This is in the A1 Deutsch ‘Talking About People 3’ lesson.

6

Hello Mario2189,

Thanks for confirming that my sentence was indeed correct. I tried putting in my variant of this answer and when I clicked on ‘Check’, it gave it as an incorrect answer. It would only accept “meine Mutter liest sehr gerne Zeitschriften”.

Cheers.

7

Notice that between the official version

  • meine Mutter liest sehr gerne Zeitschriften

and your alternative

  • meine Mutter liest die Zeitschriften sehr gerne

there are two differences. The first is the placement of “sehr gerne”, and the second is that your alternative includes the definite article “die”. I understand how you got there by analogy with “die Nachrichten” in a previous sentence, but I would guess that your answer is being marked incorrect because of that. (Also, it seem to me – maybe I’m wrong? – that it slightly changes the meaning to add “die” also.)

8

hallo j21,
I think you are right.

The “die” sounds a bit strange to me . When the definite article is used (needed?) It’s either
"meine Mutter liest diese Zeitschriften gerne" or “meine Mutter liest gerne diese Zeitschriften”. Or “diese Zeitschriften liest meine Mutter gerne”.

9

agree with @redux2

10

So why then is “Die” used for the sentences:

  1. Unser Vater liest die Zeitung sehr gerne
  2. meine Schwester liest die Nachrichten sehr gerne