Wie schreibt man Ihren Namen?
I understand the grammar of the above sentence except the word man. What is the meaning of man? Can we omit it, so it would be the following?
Wie schreibt Ihren Namen?
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Sign up to join this communityThe German man is an indefinite pronoun replacing a not further specified person or group of persons in a sentence. It only exists in nominative singular and replaces the (essential) subject of your example sentence:
Wie schreiben die Leute Ihren Namen? - Wie schreibt man Ihren Namen?
Personal pronouns have a similar function but they are inflected:
Wie schreibst du deinen Namen? Wie schreiben Sie Ihren Namen? Wie schreibe ich Ihren Namen?
The word "man" is the subject of the sentence. "Man" is the one who writes, and besides the verb itself this is actually the one thing you cannot omit in that sentence. The closest English equivalent to "man" is "one", more idiomatic options are "you" and "people", depending on context.
man
inWie schreibt man Ihren Namen?
is likeyou
inHow do you write your name?
– Phantômaxx Aug 29 '19 at 21:09How does one write your name?
and like in that English version, the subject man/one cannot be just omitted (How does write your name?
) – cbeleites unhappy with SX Aug 30 '19 at 19:49you
inHow do you write your name?
– Phantômaxx Aug 30 '19 at 21:40