Mir ist das Glas gefallen.
Ich habe das Glas fallen lassen.
Do both sentences mean I (accidentally) dropped the glass? Can these two structures be used interchangeably?
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Sign up to join this communityMir ist das Glas gefallen.
Ich habe das Glas fallen lassen.
Do both sentences mean I (accidentally) dropped the glass? Can these two structures be used interchangeably?
The first sentence, as you wrote it, is ambiguous. It is unidiomatic but it could have the following two meanings.
The glass fell to me (into my arms)
I dropped the glass.
The proper verb for the first version is "runterfallen"
Mir ist das Glas runtergefallen.
As far as the general meaning is concerned this and the other sentence of yours express the same. You dropped the glass. However, in the mir-version you're much more the victim of circumstances. The phrasing is such that you're not the agent but the glass is. So "dropping it" merely happened to you.
In the second example grammatically you are the agent, and although it does not by any means imply that you did it on purpose I would go for the mir-version if I had dropped my friends laptop into a bucket of water.
By the way... if you use that construction in a context where you clearly did it on purpose and everybody knows it, then it is a euphemism.
Wenn du nicht aufhörst zu singen, dann fällt mir vielleicht der Föhn in die Wanne.
Mir ist das Glas herunter gefallen.
is passive, so it means you accidentally dropped it. (In my opinion "mir ist das Glas gefallen" doesn't make any sense.)
Ich habe das Glas fallen lassen.
is active, so it wasn't necessarily an accident.
Mir ist das Glas gefallen.
This is not a German sentence. It doesn't mean anything.
What you mean is:
Mir ist das Glas heruntergefallen.
And has the same meaning as:
Ich habe das Glas fallen lassen.