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Die Person, die die Polizei angerufen hat, war sehr nervös.

Duolingo asked me to translate this sentence, and my answer "The person who the police called was very nervous." was marked wrong, with the correct answer provided being "The person who called the police was very nervous". Shouldn't the relative pronoun die remain the same in either nominative or accusative? Also if I remember correctly die Polizei as a collective noun is singular feminine in German (as opposed to British English where "the police" licenses plural verbs). If that's the case does my interpretation also work?

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  • Very similar question here, might be considered as duplicate.
    – guidot ♦
    Commented Oct 29 at 11:30
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    As an aside, I'd always use Plusquamperfekt here, not Perfekt -- her call is in the past relative from her being nervous: Die Frau, die [eine Stunde zuvor] die Polizei angerufen hatte, war [nun] sehr nervös. Unless she was still calling/being called, while being nervous, but then it would be simple Präteritum: Die Frau, die die Polzei anrief, war [gleichzeitig] sehr nervös.
    – Peter - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Oct 29 at 12:50
  • @Peter-ReinstateMonica: that's because you live in Berlin, I guess. People over here in BW would never use Plusquamperfekt at all. If it weren't taught at school, they'd probably think that form doesn't exist.
    – Thomas Weller
    Commented Oct 30 at 18:54
  • @ThomasWeller I suppose most people do not use it in casual conversations; but in writing I hope it would be used because it is correct ;-).
    – Peter - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Oct 30 at 19:33
  • @Peter-ReinstateMonica Most likely, the meaning is, that the person was nervous while being on the phone. Either perfect or preterite, but Plusquamperfect would change the entire meaning. So, I doubt that you would "always" use Pqp.
    – rexkogitans
    Commented Oct 31 at 7:07

3 Answers 3

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You are right on both counts:

  • The sentence is ambiguous as to who called whom. It is better to reword it to make it clearer, e.g. by using a passive voice.
  • "Polizei" is always singular, there is no such thing as using singular nouns with plural verbs in German like there is in some dialects of English.
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    I think context makes the meaning clear even if the grammar is ambiguous. I'm not going to claim that the police never call someone out of the blue, but the natural assumption would be that it was the other way around.
    – RDBury
    Commented Oct 28 at 23:06
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    @RDBury to emphasize your point, I as a native speaker struggled for two minutes to find the ambiguity because it seemed so obvious that it was the person that called the police, not vice versa.
    – infinitezero
    Commented Oct 29 at 13:11
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    It would, however, be a good reason why that person was nervous. If the police call you, that could be a bad sign...
    – Philipp Imhof
    Commented Oct 29 at 15:06
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    @RDBury This seems to depend on the person, I read the head line and was therefore expecting ambiguity and when reading the sentence immediately found it to be ambiguous.
    – quarague
    Commented Oct 30 at 9:16
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Die Person, die die Polizei angerufen hat, war sehr nervös.

It is only ambigous if you don't take the context into account. It's far more likely that someone calls the police than vice versa.

It's so unlikely that someone is called by police that German police even warns people “Police never calls you.” to save them from some common scams in which people are called by criminals who cover up as “police”.

For the seldom event that someone is called by the police for real, you would use passive voice:

Die Person, die von der Polizei angerufen worden ist, war sehr nervös.

This is commonly phrased with a participial group rather than a relative clause though:

Die von der Polizei angerufene Person war sehr nervös.

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  • So summing up, the ambiguity is only light, because the accusative interpretation describes a less likely situation. A second reason that points in the same direction is that the accusative form is rarely used; and that is so precisely because of the ambiguity. Therefore, nominative is sort of a default way of interpreting that sentence.
    – Lutz Prechelt
    Commented Oct 29 at 12:28
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    I think it makes sense to say that the sentence is grammatically ambiguous, but not pragmatically. OP is clearly asking about grammatical ambiguity.
    – Jonathan Herrera ♦
    Commented Oct 29 at 13:38
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    "Police never calls you" is nonsense. I've been called by German police on two occasions.
    – Zac67
    Commented Oct 29 at 15:48
  • minor note: "...angerufen worden ist" sounds very strange to my native speaker self. I would use "...angerufen wurde" here.
    – Syndic
    Commented Oct 30 at 6:42
  • @Syndic That's a northern thing. In the south they never replace Perfekt with Präteritum and it sounds super odd to their ears.
    – Janka
    Commented Oct 31 at 23:11
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The sentence should to be translated to:

The person who has been calling the police was very nervous.

The relative clause in German is in Perfekt (= Present Perfect) tense. I'd consider that an error, given that the tense of the main clause is Imperfekt (= Simple Past). The relative clause in German should be in Imperfekt or even better Plusquamperfekt:

Die Person, die die Polizei anrief, war nervös.

Die Person, die die Polizei angerufen hatte, war nervös.

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  • "sein" is a verb much more commonly used in the imperfect than "anrufen", I cannot see an error here at all
    – wonderbear
    Commented Oct 29 at 18:26
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    I am not sure this is an answer to the question.
    – Jonathan Herrera ♦
    Commented Oct 29 at 22:09

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