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Given the sentence "That is one of my favorite songs, from one of my favorite bands.", and using "das Lied" instead of "der Song", both DeepL and Google Translate show:

  • English: That is one of my favorite songs, from one of my favorite bands.
  • German (translation): Das ist einer meiner Lieblingslieder von einer meiner Lieblingsbands.

I thought the rule was that you use the form of "one" that matches the singular form of the target noun that is in plural, in this case das Lied/die Lieder and "die Band/die Bänder", as this Reddit post says:

https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/6ineu9/one_of_these/

Given that Linguee shows "Lied" as neuter and "Band" as feminine:

Why isn't it "eines/eins meines LieblingsLieder" and "eine meine Lieblingsband" instead of "einer meiner" being used with both noun phrases as shown by DeepL and Google Translate? Also, why isn't it "Lieblingsbände" instead of "Lieblingsbands" since die Bände is the plural form of "die Band"?

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    If you save the rule that "favorite song" should be translated as "Lieblingslieder" and re-run DeepL on the original input, you'll get the correct answer of "Dies ist eines meiner Lieblingslieder, von einer meiner Lieblingsbands."
    – Polygnome
    Apr 29, 2021 at 11:41

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You are completely right that Lied is neuter and Band is feminine, so "eines" and "eine" are in fact correct. Since "songs" and "bands" are also used in plural form in German, the plural possessive pronoun "meiner" is correct in both sentences.

So, the translations should be eines meiner Lieblingslieder and eine meiner Lieblingsbands.

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    A small nitpick on terminology, but I think it's more logical to call meiner a possessive determiner here since to goes in front of a noun and replaces an article. There are possessive pronouns as well, and in German they are usually the same words, but for masculine nouns in the nominative case the determiner is mein while the pronoun is meiner. I don't know they handle this distinction in German grammars; it's more important in English because the words are usually different there. Welcome SE by the way; 3 upvotes on your first answer is impressive.
    – RDBury
    Apr 27, 2021 at 19:51
  • @RDBury: In German grammars, there is usually no distinction between possessive determiners and possessive pronouns. They are all usually called possessive pronouns.
    – mach
    Jan 20, 2022 at 15:34
  • @mach: Thanks. The determiners and the pronouns are declined slightly differently in German, so I think it's still important for learners to know which is which. The distinctions is probably less important for native speakers though since they already know how to decline everything.
    – RDBury
    Jan 20, 2022 at 18:58
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DeepL translates correctly to

Das ist einer meiner Lieblingssongs...

(and "der Song" is male in German)

Google indeed has it wrong with

Das ist einer meiner Lieblingslieder...

which is obviously wrong because "Lied" is neuter as you rightly say.

With respect to "Band", that's a bit of a tricky one:

There are actually three different "Band" words in German:

  1. der Band (m) - tome or volume (book)
  2. das Band (n) - ribbon or tape
  3. die Band (f) - band (music), loan word from English and pronounced as such

Google Translate apparently can't tell the three apart.

The proper translation for the example sentence is thus

Das ist eines meiner Lieblingslieder von einer meiner Lieblingsbands.

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There are multiple issues in the question to address separately:

The correct form

The only correct sentence is:

Das ist eines (nom. sg. n) meiner Lieblingslieder (gen. pl. n) von einer (dat. sg. f) meiner Lieblingsbands (gen. pl. f).

With Lieblingssongs, it would be:

Das ist einer (nom. sg. m) meiner Lieblingssongs (gen. pl. m) von einer (dat. sg. f) meiner Lieblingsbands (gen. pl. f).

Why isn't it eines meines or eine meine?

Because einer/eine/eines (indefinite pronoun) and meiner (possesive determiner, i.e. 'article' of the following noun) do not have the same case.

Einer/eine/eines acts like a noun itself and takes the case and number according to its role in the sentence, while meiner is dependent and congruent to its noun. (I guess you were expecting that they would both depend on the noun and hence would have the same case and number as well as the same ending.)

However, because of their semantical relationship, einer/eine/eines and the noun do have the same gender.

  • The first pronoun eines is the head of the nominal phrase in the complex predicate with sein. Thus, it is nominative singular. It has the meaning of one in English. It matches die Lieblingslieder (n. pl; sg.: das Lied) in being neuter, or, respectively, die Lieblingssongs (m. pl; sg.: der Song) in being masculine.
  • The case of the second pronoun einer is governed by the preposition von and thus dative singular. It matches die Bands (f. pl.; sg.: die Band) in being feminine.
  • The phrases meiner Lieblingslieder and meiner Lieblingsbands are genitive plural. The genitive has the same meaning as the preposition of in English (one of my favourite …). In plural, all genders have the same endings; nevertheless meiner Lieblingslieder is neuter and meiner Lieblingsbands is feminine.

Why isn't it die Lieblingsbände(r)?

Because the plural of die Band is die Bands. This was already answered extensively by tofro. Der Band and das Band on the one hand and die Band on the other are homographs in nominative singular, but they are inclined and pronounced differently:

  • Der Band ('volume', pl. die Bände) and das Band ('ribbon', pl. die Bänder) are actually spoken differently in singular and plural. In singular, their root features an [a], while the plural is marked by the umlaut [​ɛ] (similiar to Engl. man – men).
  • Die Band ('band', pl. die Bands), however, is a loanword; the orthography and pronounciation was adopted from English. Thus, it already has the umlaut [ɛ] in the singular root which is not marked orthographically. This means: the [ɛ] doesn't mark the plural and there would be no point to writing it with <ä> only in plural (that makes it different from man – men or Mutter – Mütter where the umlaut is the (only) plural marker and also reflected orthographically). Furthermore, -er is an untypical feminine plural ending (die Mütter, f. pl., being one notable exception).
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You're right, it has to be "Das ist eines meiner Lieblingslieder von einer meiner Lieblingsbands.". However, as you said, you changed "Song" into "Lied", which might be the reason. "Song" is masculine, therefore the sentence with "Das ist einer meiner Lieblingssongs" would be correct. However, "Lied" is neuter, and therefore "eines meiner Lieblingslieder" is correct. I assume that this is an error in the translationservices you mentioned.

To your second question: The plural of "Die Band" is indeed "Die Bands", as dwds shows. "Bänder" is the plural of "Das Band", which means (among multiple translations) "strap".

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  • The statement "Bänder" is the plural of "[d]as Band" is right, but the question was about die Bände (without -r in the end) which is the plural of der Band (meaning volume).
    – amadeusamadeus
    Apr 28, 2021 at 9:28
  • @amadeusamadeus: Actually, the question mentions both "die Bänder" and "die Bände".
    – O. R. Mapper
    Apr 28, 2021 at 10:47
  • @O.R.Mapper I see, I was only referring to the last sentence with the explicit question why isn't it "Lieblingsbände" instead of "Lieblingsbands" since die Bände is the plural form of "die Band"? for completeness.
    – amadeusamadeus
    Apr 28, 2021 at 10:50

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