machen Vs sagen

VidyaMS

April 4, 2020

Hallo .

Ich habe ein Zweifel.

In the sentence - 'Ich kenne dich, du machst immer Witze' . Can it be also said as ' Ich kenne dich, du sagst immer Witze ' ??
Also , in the sentence ' Magst du das Denkmal sehen ?' isn't 'the monument' the object and hence shouldn't it be in Accusativ ??

Vielen Dank.!

sfpugh

April 5, 2020

Hi Vidya-manuS

Ich kenne dich, du machst immer Witze.

I know you, you always tell jokes.
I am not sure if the translation given is the best translation.
If you translate this literally, it would be "I know you, you always make jokes" which is OK English but maybe "you are always joking" would be better.

I would think that "Ich kenne dich, du erzählst immer Witze" is better for "I know you, you always tell jokes."

On sagst, maybe German is like English, you would not say "you always say jokes".

I wonder what the tutors think?

Julia-Rocket-German-Tutor

April 7, 2020

Hallo Vidya-manuS und sfpugh,

I agree with sfpugh, both "Ich kenne dich, du machst immer Witze." and "Ich kenne dich, du erzählst immer Witze." are fine to use.

In regards to "Magst du das Denkmal sehen?" - "Would you like to see the monument?", you are absolutely right das Denkmal needs to be in the accusative case, however the article das doesn't change hence it is already accusative.

Also just as a side note, instead of saying "Ich habe einen Zweifel." you can just say "Ich habe Zweifel." -"I have doubts." as that would be the more common expression.

Bis zum nächsten Mal!

Viele Grüße
Julia

Kevin-R3

April 7, 2020

Should the mochte- form be used, rather than the mag- form if one is asking "would like to" as opposed to "like"?

Julia-Rocket-German-Tutor

April 8, 2020

Hi Kevin-R3,

yes, both are ok to use, but "Möchtest du das Denkmal sehen?" would be more common to say.

Grüße
Julia

machen Vs sagen

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