# The entire roof had been removed



## Razneen

Hi, I'm trying to translate *The entire roof had been removed so we couldn't take a holiday *into German

My attempt is: _Das ganze Dach hat sich entfernen also wir konnten nicht einen Urlaub nehmen
_
Thank you for any help!


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## Demiurg

_Das komplette Dach ist abgedeckt (entfernt) worden ..._


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## bearded

My suggestion:
das komplette Dach war entfernt worden und wir konnten deshalb keinen Urlaub machen.


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## Razneen

Thank you both for your replies! You've been very helpful


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## Hutschi

Hi, Razneen, can you, please, give some context?

Who removed the roof?

If it was a tornado, the phrasing might be other than if it was a man.

Example:
Tornado:
_Das komplette Dach ist abgedeckt/zerstört/weggeflogen.

Person:
Das komplette Dach wurde abgedeckt/ist abgedeckt._


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## bearded

In any case shouldn't it be Plusquamperfekt (had been removed)?


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## berndf

The English pluperfect relates to the point in the past of the narration, e.g. to the point in time when we couldn't go on holidays and marks it as complete at that point in time.

The German Plusquamperfekt relates to a point in time before the point in time of the narration. So, e.g., we couldn't go on holidays last year because two years ago the roof was removed. That is certainly not what the OP wanted to express.


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## Razneen

Hutschi said:


> Hi, Razneen, can you, please, give some context?
> 
> Who removed the roof?
> 
> If it was a tornado, the phrasing might be other than if it was a man.
> 
> Example:
> Tornado:
> _Das komplette Dach ist abgedeckt/zerstört/weggeflogen.
> 
> Person:
> Das komplette Dach wurde abgedeckt/ist abgedeckt._



The sentence is in a paragraph about my summer holiday. I am explaining that our house was under construction as we were building a new extension therefore we couldn't take a holiday.

So to answer your question, it was a man.


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## Hutschi

In this case I'd say:

Das ganze Dach war abgedeckt, deshalb konnten wir keinen Urlaub nehmen.


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## Hutschi

In this case I'd say:

Das ganze Dach war abgedeckt, deshalb konnten wir keinen Urlaub nehmen.
(This implies the status of the roof when you could not take a holiday.)


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## bearded

berndf said:


> The English pluperfect relates to the point in the past of the narration, e.g. to the point in time when we couldn't go on holidays and marks it as complete at that point in time.
> 
> The German Plusquamperfekt relates to a point in time before the point in time of the narration. So, e.g., we couldn't go on holidays last year because two years ago the roof was removed. That is certainly not what the OP wanted to express.


Why do you say it is not what the OP wanted to express (at the moment of my suggestion, the OP's explanation had not arrived yet). The roof could well have been removed two days ago.  If the main action is in the past (wir konnten nicht...) the roof was removed prior to that past (war schon entfernt worden), it seems to me.
 Hutschi's suggestion ''war abgedeckt'', describing the status at the moment in which no holiday was possible,  is of course perfect.


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## Hutschi

Indeed I used the status here, because it is shorter and it is the cause in this context.
Compare: Das Dach war zwei Tage vorher abgedeckt worden, dann wurde es am nächsten Tag erneuert(,) und wir konnten in Urlaub fahren. (Comma optional after spelling reform, I'd use it to show the structure.)


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> Why do you say it is not what the OP wanted to express


Because you wouldn't say it that way in English. Contrary to the German Plusquamperfekt, the English pluperfect does not express in itself antecedance. You would need a temporal adverb to express that.


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## Schlabberlatz

berndf said:


> the English pluperfect does not express in itself antecedance. You would need a temporal adverb to express that.


Really? Wikipedia says: "The time frame may also be understood implicitly from the previous or later context: …" and includes the following examples:
"He *had* already *left* when we arrived."
"_He *had left* when we arrived_", adding: "(where his leaving preceded our arrival)".

Is there any significant difference in meaning between these two examples? It doesn’t look so to me.

Edit: Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_of_English_verb_forms#Past_perfect


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## berndf

Schlabberlatz said:


> Really? Wikipedia says: "The time frame may also be understood implicitly from the previous or later context: …" and includes the following examples:
> "He *had* already *left* when we arrived."
> "_He *had left* when we arrived_", adding: "(where his leaving preceded our arrival)".


Yes, understood _implicitly from the ... context_ is fine. But it is not the pluperfect in itself that expresses antecedance. It is the same difference as between English present perfect and German Perfekt: The German Perfekt expresses pastness, the English present perfect doesn't, though it may imply pastness. What the present perfect expresses is completion of an action in the present. The German tense system generally doesn't express things like completion or progressiveness, it only expresses time whereas the English tense system expresses both time and aspect. That's why the two are sometimes difficult to match.


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## Schlabberlatz

But why shouldn’t there be any antecedence implied in the sentence at hand?

"_He *had left* when we arrived_"
1) He leaves
2) He is gone
3) We arrive

*The entire roof had been removed so we couldn't take a holiday *
1) The roof is removed
2) It is gone
3) We find that it would be undavisable to go on a holiday

I don’t see why it should be wrong to translate these examples using the German Plusquamperfekt, even if "Er war schon weg" would be better than "Er war schon gegangen".


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## berndf

Schlabberlatz said:


> *The entire roof had been removed so we couldn't take a holiday *
> 1) The roof is removed
> 2) It is gone
> 3) We find that it would be undavisable to go on a holiday


Exactly. The roof *is *gone. There is no mention of when is was removed. It could have been earlier it could have been in the "Jetztzeit" of the sentence ("right now"). The important thing the English perfect expresses is that the effect has been achieved. The German Plusquamperfekt contains the additional information then the action that cause the effect happened in the past. This information is not included English perfect forms.

The most notorious example is:
_I have lived in London for 10 years_
does not imply that you live elsewhere today; on the contrary it implies that you still do live in London.

By contrast
_Ich habe 10 Jahre lang in London gelebt._
expresses exactly the opposite, viz. that you don't live there any more.


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## Schlabberlatz

berndf said:


> It could have been earlier it could have been in the "Jetztzeit" of the sentence ("right now").


Yes, it could have been in the "Jetztzeit". But possibility does not equal certainty. I interpret the sentence to mean that the roof was removed earlier. Do you think this interpretation is wrong or very improbable? Why not "Das Dach war abgedeckt worden …"? (This could also mean something that comes very close to "Jetztzeit", couldn’t it? "Das Dach war abgedeckt worden. Vor einer halben Minute waren sie [die Arbeiter] fertig geworden.")

(By "2) It is gone" I meant to imply that there is (or at least can be) a time span between 1) and 3).)


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## berndf

The forms may have a very large extensional overlay but you use them for different purposes. And that makes all the difference. In English you express completion, in German you express antesedance.

I thing Demiurg's and Hutschi's intuition to use the Perfekt is quite right. Alternatively you you could use the Zustandspassiv to express the same thing the English perfect tenses express (_Das Dach war abgedeckt... _- without_ worden_).


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## Schlabberlatz

Maybe you’re right. But "_Das komplette Dach ist abgedeckt (entfernt) worden ..._" resembles "resultatives Perfekt" too much in my opinion. It has been removed, so it’s gone *now*. But the sentence in question is clearly set in the past ("… we couldn’t …"). I’ll try to remember the possibility to use the Zustandspassiv for past perfect, though. Might come in handy in the future (for translations).


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## bearded

berndf said:


> I thing Demiurg's and Hutschi's intuition to use the Perfekt is quite right. Alternatively you you could use the Zustandspassiv to express the same thing the English perfect tenses express (_Das Dach war abgedeckt... _- without_ worden_).


Then how would you translate into English (without using the Zustandspassiv) ''the entire roof has been removed so we cannot take our holiday''? It seems to me that ''has been removed'' is something that happened prior to a present action - It corresponds to Hutschi's Perfekt, but is not suitable if everything takes place in the past. I may well be mistaken, of course.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> Then how would you translate into English (without using the Zustandspassiv) ''the entire roof has been removed so we cannot take our holiday''?


I find your request difficult to comply with. How would one translate something into English which is already in English?


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## bearded

Oo.ps I am sorry I meant into German.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> It corresponds to Hutschi's Perfekt, but is not suitable if everything takes place in the past.


Why not?


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## bearded

Well Hutschi originally wrote (no.2) ''das komplette Dach ist abgedeckt worden'' and it seems to me that this would be correct if you continued by saying ''und wir koennen deshalb keinen Urlaub machen''.  The antecedence refers to the present.  But the OP says ''so we could not...'', therefore I feel that the antecedence should only be ''war abgedeckt worden''.  I do not agree that an adverb of time is necessary (see no.14 :  Schlabberlatz seems to agree with me).  That is why I asked you to translate into German (for comparison) ''the entire roof has been removed so we cannot take our holiday''.


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