Hot answers tagged declension
12
The preposition vor is used with the Dativ in this case (no pun intended).
From the Duden Online entry:
drückt aus, dass etwas dem genannten Zeitpunkt oder Vorgang [unmittelbar] vorausgeht; früher als; bevor das Genannte erreicht ist
Grammatik
mit Dativ; zeitlich
Beispiele
vor wenigen Augenblicken
vor Ablauf der Frist
das war schon vor ...
8
It is done with "s".
11 Oscars gingen an ... (Plural)
Gewinner der Oscars für beste Musik und beste Regie war ... (Genitiv)
Der Film wurde mit den Oscars ... (Dativ)
Ich freue mich auf die Oscars... (Akkusativ)
I do agree that your examples sound odd though. The first one would be fine with s.
The second one would be phrased as:
...
8
The rule is: if you use dative plural you have to append an -n to the nominative plural form:
die Monate / den Monaten
die Eier / den Eiern
die Bäume / den Bäumen
There are two exceptions to this rule:
If the nominative plural already ends with an -n, it remains the same:
die Eltern / den Eltern
die Hunnen / den Hunnen
die Mädchen / den Mädchen
If ...
6
There's a table on this Wikipedia page which summarizes how to decline German adjectives.
There are two kinds of forms:
weak: -en
strong: -e
Example:
Die großen Fernseher stehen hinten.
but
Große Fernseher sind teuer.
Rules
From the Wikipedia article
Das Adjektiv wird „schwach“ dekliniert, wenn es einem Artikel oder Pronomen in nicht ...
6
That's archaic use of the construct etw. ist mein\dein\sein meaning etw. gehört mir\dir\ihm. It's still used and common with objects and the - today - correct declension:
Wem gehören die Schuhe? - Das sind meine.
...but is not so common for things, that can't physically belong to a person like years, time or guilt. I'll try a modern (not so poetic) ...
6
Look at german wikipedia:
Dativ-n
Bei Wörtern, die im Nominativ Plural auf -e, -el und -er enden, wird im Dativ Plural ein -n angehängt. Diese Konstruktion ist im Hochdeutschen üblich, in manchen deutschen Mundarten und in der dialektnahen Umgangssprache fällt es allerdings oft weg.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dativ#Dativ-n
6
The rule is very simple: the dative plural of nouns almost always ends in "-n".
There are very few exceptions like:
ich gebe es den Opas, den Omas.
Also, a few words of English origin have their dative plural in "-s" :
Aus den Parks, aus den Wracks, auf den Decks.
But these exceptions are statistically negligible. The robust rule is:
...
3
This question is related to the one about English words in German Grammar.
"Oscars" is much more common than "Oscare", as a Google search for the terms
"oscars gewonnen" and
"oscare gewonnen"
shows.
I don't think there's an alternative to these two. You should be fine with "Oscars".
3
Ein Blick in den Duden enthüllt die folgenden Beispiele:
(attributiv): sämtliches Brauchbare
sämtlicher aufgehäufte Sand
die Nutzung sämtlicher vorhandenen Energie
mit sämtlichem verfügbaren Material
sämtliches beschlagnahmte Eigentum
sämtliche Beamten/(auch:) Beamte
sämtliche anwesenden/(seltener auch:) anwesende Bürger
die Kleidung ...
3
"Vor" is a space or time preposition, and there is a very simple rule (that you might already know if you learned Latin at school) which applies to a lot of these prepositions :
If there is a movement in the direction indicated, then use Akkusativ (it's a special accusative called directive i think) : "Ich gehe vor das Haus" means you go to the back of ...
2
Another approach:
The indefinite article "ein" has to be declined in congruency with the noun "Zeit". To decline "ein" correctly, you need to determine:
the gender
the case
of the noun. The grammatical gender of "Zeit" is female. And this fact rules out "einen" as option; see this overview regarding how to decline "ein". So, "einen" can't be correct in ...
2
I would suggest to think of it as my own instead of mine.
That would make mein an adjective instead of a pronoun.
Das Auto ist blau.
Das Auto ist mein.
vs.
Das Auto ist meins.
I can't really capture that in English because mine has also an adjective feel to it but the German meine/s/r/n... really feels like a pronoun.
Das Auto ist ...
2
Jemand/Niemand for Akkusativ or Dativ is at best colloquial; you should not use it in written language.
Niemandes/Jemandes is the correct form to be used as a Genitiv; Niemands/Jemands is again colloquial. It is worth noting that the Genitiv form is rare nowadays. Most people seem to prefer rewording such a sentence to avoid the Genitiv, such as "Daran hat ...
1
Note that we need to distinguish between the genetive cause meiner of the personal pronoun ich and the various forms of the possessive pronoun mein.
For an actual usage of the genetive cause, check some verbs that need a genetive object:
Er erinnert sich meiner (=Er erinnert sich an mich). Er schämt sich meiner (=Er schämt sich wegen mir).
Still, your ...
1
Nice point! In fact, both variants seem to be valid (see <1>, <2>, <3> and <4>), but the only explanation given is (as Hackworth pointed out already) that dropping the suffix is common in colloquial language.
EDIT: i think it's better to reduce the answer to the statement that both variants are orthographically valid; for deeper discussions, see ...
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