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What word would you use to say some as like

Who took your book? Some kid from school.

Wer hat dein Buch genommen? Einiges/Manches Kind aus der Schule.

Einige and manche just sound very wrong to me here, but I'm not sure.

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    I'll add it here since it is missing in the otherwise fin eanswer... einige and manche are plural. It may conjugate as a singular but it always describes a group of items represented by this one individual. Also, genommen is not idiomatic... people would say "weggenommen" or "mitgenommen" or (if with evil intent) "geklaut"
    – Emanuel
    Oct 10, 2013 at 10:30

3 Answers 3

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Irgendein Kind aus der Schule.

Irgendein means: a specific object from a known selection but you don't particularly know which one.

In plural you would say:

Ein paar Kinder aus der Schule.

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    Don’t know or don’t care. – Other option (colloquial): so ein Kind (so ’n Kind).
    – chirlu
    Oct 10, 2013 at 8:33
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  • Eines von den Kindern aus der Schule.
  • Eines der Kinder aus der Schule.
  • Irgendwelche Kinder aus der Schule. (Plural)

translates you sentence as well.

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In Yiddish we have "eppis a kind vun der schul...".

As an aside, "eppis" is generally considered to be equivalent to etwas, but some authorities argue that it derives from "a bis(chen)". I find the latter theory unconvincing because etwas is otherwise missing from the Yiddish vocabulary.

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  • Interesting. In at least some regions of the Palatine, you could say "Ebbes e Kind vun de Schuuhl...", which is almost exactly the same as Yiddish. The Palatine "ebbes" means "etwas".
    – divby0
    Oct 10, 2013 at 20:58
  • "Ebbes/Eppes" is not restricted to the Palatine dialect, its quite common in near all southern dialects: woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/…
    – Takkat
    Oct 10, 2013 at 21:46

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