# Inge schenkt ihrem Freund eine Büchertasche



## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Good day,

I have four such sentences. I hope you don't 
mind if I ask them one at a time.

Is there agreement here?

Inge schenkt ihrem Freund eine Büchertasche.


thank you 

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail


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## Hutschi

I do not know exactly what you mean.
Schenken (to donate) is an act to give another person something as gift.

I think the definition of agreement is here when the friend takes the gift.

Usually this is what happens. 
But if the friend refuses to take the gift I do not think there is an agreement.


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## Demiurg

I guess he means agreement in a linguistic sense.

There's e.g. agreement between the subject _Inge_ and the verb form _schenkt_ (3rd person singular).


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## Hutschi

In this sense there is also an agreement between "ihrem" and "Inge" (both female).


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## berndf

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Is there agreement here?


Can you be a bit more specific? Agreement between what and what? Between subject and verb, between constituents in a noun phrase (which one), ...?


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Is there agreement here?
> 
> Inge schenkt ihrem Freund eine Büchertasche.



Sorry for the confusion,
good day,

I meant is there agreement between:

1. ihrem Freund
2. eine Büchertasche 

The original sentence was, "Inge schenkt ihrem Freund ein Radio"

I am studying dative agreement. I am trying to develop a better
understanding between the uses of dative pronouns and dative
nouns and the gender agreement in the same sentence as 
a definite article with another noun. The words "ihrem Freund"
do not have to agree with "ein Radio". They are two seperate
parts of the sentence. But the whole unit of the sentence 
agrees where is should in:

Inge schenkt ihrem Freund eine Büchertasche

correct?

thank you so much,

btwcan


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## Dan2

It's still not clear (to me at least) what you're asking, but maybe the following will be helpful.


bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> I meant is there agreement between:
> 
> 1. ihrem Freund
> 2. eine Büchertasche
> ...
> The words "ihrem Freund" do not have to agree with "ein Radio". They are two seperate parts of the sentence.


That is correct (and it doesn't matter if it's "Radio" or "Büchertasche").  So it's not clear why you ask if there is agreement.


bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> But the whole unit of the sentence agrees where is should in:
> 
> Inge schenkt ihrem Freund eine Büchertasche
> 
> correct?


If you are asking whether this is a correct sentence, the answer is yes.

The word-for-word English equivalent is:
Inge gives her friend a bookbag.
and the structure is the same in the two languages: subject - verb - indirect object (dative) - direct object (accusative).

The two objects don't have to "agree" with each other in any sense. You can see this in English too.  For ex., one can be singular and one plural:
Inge gives her friend bookbags.
Inge gives her friends a bookbag.

What you have in German that you don't have in English is that the ENDINGS on the articles, possessives, etc. have to be correct for case, gender, and number.
And you have that correct: dative-masc-singular "ihrEM", accusative-fem-singular "einE".


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## Frank78

The agreement of cases is only within one word group of the same case. (I forgot the correct terminology)

That means article, adjective and noun must have the proper endings:

*der* klein*e* Hund - Nom.
*des *klein*en* Hund*es* - Gen.
*dem* klein*en* Hund - Dat.
*den* klein*en* Hund - Acc.

So you cannot mix them up and say "der kleinen Hund"

Is this what you are looking for?

The structure pf your sentence is the following:
Inge schenkt ihrem Freund eine Büchertasche
Who gives whom what.

There's no agreement between the nominative who-part, the dative whom-part and the accusative what.

It only gets tricky for English speakers if you have two persons or two things in dative *and* accusative.


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> 1. ihrem Freund
> 2. eine Büchertasche



Sorry for the confusion.

To be most specific is there agreement in the following:

'eine Büchertasche'

thank you so much


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Good day,

Let me ask this with another example. I don't need to
know if there is agreement. Is the translation correct?

Inge schenkt ihrem Freund ein Kuli.

Inge is giving her friend a pen.

thank you.

bt


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## Dan2

You DO need to worry about agreement, but only, as Frank said, within each noun phrase, which in these sentences are:
- subject
- indirect (dative) object
- direct (accusative) object

In the three sentences you've mentioned, the accusative objects are "Radio", "Büchertasche", and "Kuli", and you must have agreement between the "ein" word and the gender of the object.  "Radio" is neuter (usually),  and "no ending" is the correct ending for accusative neuter, so "ein Radio" was correct.  Similarly, "einE Büchertasche" was correct.

Now you have to go to a dictionary and find out what the gender of "Kuli" is.  Then you have to put the correct ending on the "ein" word.  If you haven't memorized the endings, you have to consult a table of endings.  Doing these things will be more useful to you than our telling you the "answer".


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Dan2 said:


> Now you have to go to a dictionary and find out what the gender of "Kuli" is.



Good day,

According to my textbook it is:

Der Kuli


Then accordingly it should be 'ein Kuli'.

Correct?

thank you so much

btwcan.


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## berndf

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Then accordingly it should be 'ein Kuli'.


Try again.

Hint: you looked up in the right column but in the wrong row (e.g. here); you looked up masculine, *nominative *but you need to look up masculine, *????*.

Now, to know what ???? stands for, you need to find out the case of "Kuli" in the sentence (another hint: it is the direct object and what is the case of the direct object?) because agreement rules require the article to agree with (=have the same case, number, gender as) the noun it belongs to (that's why Dan said you DID have to worry about agreement rules).


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Inge schenkt ihrem Freund ein Kuli.
> 
> Inge is giving her friend a pen.



Inge schenkt ihrem Freund einen Kuli


thank you so much

btwcan


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Good day,

This is the last one I have to ask a question about:

Inge schenkt ihrem Freund eine Kulis.
Inge is giving her friend pens.

(der Kuli, die Kulis: Deutsch Heute)

thank you so much

bt


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## berndf

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Inge schenkt ihrem Freund einen Kuli






bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Inge schenkt ihrem Freund eine Kulis.
> Inge is giving her friend pens.


Like in English, in (positive) plural there is no indefinite article:
_Inge schenkt ihrem Freund Kulis._


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

berndf said:


> Like in English, in (positive) plural there is no indefinite article:



Good afternoon,

If this is true how does this explain a postive plural in my textbook
(Deutsch Heute) which has an indefinite article?


Inge schenkt ihren Eltern ein Radio.
Inge is giving her parents a radio.

'Eltern' is plural.

Or am I mistaken and you are refering to 'der Radio' as
plural?

In that case it would read, "Inge schenkt ihren Eltern Radios'?

thank you so much

bluetoon


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## berndf

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> In that case it would read, "Inge schenkt ihren Eltern Radios'?


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Good day,

I have another question if there aren't too many of them already:

Inge schenkt ihrem Freund Radios.
Inge is giving her friend radios.

thank you so much

bt


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## Hutschi

Hi, if you want to transfer the number character of "ein" to plural, you can say either "zwei Radios" or "einige Radios", "mehrere Radios" or "ein paar Radios". (The sequence is: ein, zwei, ein paar/mehrere/einige, viele.)
If each of the parents get one radio, you can say "jeweils ein".
_Sie schenkte ihren Eltern jeweils ein Radio.


_


bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Good day,
> 
> Inge schenkt ihrem Freund Radios.
> Inge is giving her friend radios.
> ...


This is correct.
I have a question, two,
Can your English sentence also be translated as _
Inge gibt ihrem Freund Radios._ (This is mostly not a gift than.)


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Hutschi said:


> This is correct.
> I have a question, two,
> Can your English sentence also be translated as _
> Inge gibt ihrem Freund Radios._ (This is mostly not a gift than.)



Es gibt?  Gibt?  I do not know.

thank you.


Is there agreement between the following:

ihrer Geshwister (f/p)
ihrer Mutter (f)


thank you so much.

bt


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Hutschi said:


> Inge gibt ihrem Freund Radios.[/I] (This is mostly not a gift than.)



Inge gibt ihrem Freund Radios.

Does this equal = Inge schenkt ihrem Freund ein paar Radios

I really don't know what i'm talking about and this is out of
my depth. The German language is so variable that you can
write anything and the above is probably very close to it.

But since 'es gibt' is the way 'gibt' is presented in my textbook
(Deutsch Heute 1992) it seems to me that it would be better to
write

examples of the use of es gibt:

Im Fenster gibt es immer solche Blumen.
Gibt es hier ja, kein Tante-Emma-Laden.
Hier gibt es keine Apotheke.

These are all statements and not questions.
Inge gibt ihrem Freund Radios is not a question but a statement
in the indicative.

_Inge gibt es ihrem Freund Radios.
_
For some reason it would seem that it should be in the middle of 
the sentence or you will be saying

Hier Inge gibt es ihrem Freund zwei Radios.
(here Inge is giving his friend two radios)

thank you
i have no idea if the above is correct
i am taking a wild guess


thank you so much

btoon


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## Hutschi

"Jemandem etwas geben" bedeutet meist, jemandem etwas überreichen, manchmal, jemandem etwas zukommen lassen. Es ist meist kein Geschenk. Man möchte den Gegenstand, zum Beispiel ein Buch, zurückbekommen. "Geben" erfolgt meist direkt, ich habe es in der Hand, gebe es dem anderen, dann hat dieser es in der Hand.

_Inge gibt es ihrem Freund Radios._ ("Es" ist hier falsch. Es werden zwei Bedeutungen von "geben" vermischt: es gibt=es existiert vs. geben=überreichen)

Es gibt Radios. = Radios exist.
Dort steht ein Kind. Es gibt Roland Radios. = The child gives Roland Radios.

 Im Fenster gibt es immer solche Blumen. = Im Fenster sind immer solche Blumen.
Im Laden gibt es immer solche Blumen. = Im Laden werden immer solche Blumen angeboten.

In unserem Beispiel:

Inge gibt ihrem Freund Radios. Er soll sie reparieren. Morgen gibt er sie Inge zurück. (Sie gehören ihm nicht. Er hat sie zwar, aber er muss sie zurückgeben.)

Inge schenkt ihrem Freund Radios zum Geburtstag. Er freut sich sehr darüber, denn genau diese hat er sich gewünscht. (Sie gehören ihm jetzt.)

Inge gibt ihrem Freund Medizin. = Inge reicht ihrem Freund Medizin. (Es ist kein Geschenk. This is not a gift/present.)

"Jemandem etwas schenken" bedeutet, dass es das Eigentum des anderen wird. Man möchte es nicht zurückbekommen.


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## Resa Reader

Hutschi has explained everything correctly. I just wanted to add the following for you:

es gibt = there is .... / there are (Es gibt ein italienisches Restaurant in dieser Straße. > There is ....)
(Es gibt drei Restaurants in dieser Straße. > There are ....)

jemandem etwas geben = to give somebody something 

jemandem etwas schenken = to give somebody something as a present / as a gift


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Good afternoon,

Is there agreement here between ihrem and Geschwister?

Inge schenkt ihrer Geschwister ein Radio.
Inge is giving her brothers and sisters a radio.

(die geschwister = fem the brothers and sisters pl.)

thank you

bt


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## Resa Reader

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Good afternoon,
> 
> Is there agreement here between ihrem and Geschwister?
> 
> Inge schenkt ihrer Geschwister ein Radio.
> Inge is giving her brothers and sisters a radio.
> 
> (die geschwister = fem the brothers and sisters pl.)
> 
> bt



It is: Inge schenkt ihre*n *Geschwister*n *ein Radio.


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## Gernot Back

Resa Reader said:


> It is: Inge schenkt ihre*n *Geschwister*n *ein Radio.


.... and in addition _das Geschwister_ (sibling) is neuter in the Singular:


_Inge schenkt ihre*m *Geschwister ein Radio._​


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## Hutschi

Ist die Einzahl jetzt (außerhalb fachsprachlicher Anwendung) üblich?  Für mich gehört es nicht zur "normalen" Sprache, aber ich kann mich irren.

Ich würde sagen: _ihrem __Bruder_ bzw. _ihrer Schwester_.


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## ablativ

Wenn Inges Bruder oder ihre Schwester noch klein ist, könnte man die Diminutivform anwenden, die dann wieder umgangssprachlich klingt:

_Sie schenkt ihrem Geschwisterchen ein Radio._


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Good day,
If you could please help me with this one,

thank you so much



Inge schenkt ihrer Mutter ein Buch.
Inge is giving her mother a book.

thank you so much.

btwcan


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## Hutschi

Here it depends on the meaning of "ihrer". Without additional context it refers to Inge and the gender and number of "ihrer" and "Inge" are in agreement.

"Ihrer" can refer to another person (I think this is possible in English, too), in this case number and gender are in agreement to the other person.


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Hutschi said:


> "Ihrer" can refer to another person *INGES MOTHER* (I think this is possible in English, too), in this case number and gender *FEMININE SINGULAR* are in agreement to the other person.



Good day,

If Inges mother is feminine singular and it is in the dative case then
you use Ihrer

Ihrem (mas)
Ihrem (neut)
Ihrer (fem)
Ihren (plur)


The case Ihrer and Inge match (listed above -em -em -er -en)

The agreement for Ihrer Mutter should match (fem sing)

What I would like to know particularly if ihrer and Mutter go together

thank you so much

bluetoon


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## Nicklondon

Just a quickie: the dative is often rendered in English with "*to*" ; so in the above examples you could ask the following question: Inge gives  what *to *whom; the *to whom *bit is the dative and the thing given is in the accusative.


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Nicklondon said:


> Inge gives what *to *whom; the *to whom *bit is the dative and the



Good afternoon,

*Dative: 'ihrer Mutter'

*therefore is this correct? or is the sentence constructed wrong?

thank you

bt


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## berndf

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Inge schenkt ihrer Mutter ein Buch.
> Inge is giving her mother a book.


Yes, this is correct.


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Good day,

This is my last question.

Inge schenkt ihren Eltern eine Buchs.
Inge is giving her parents books.

is correct but it should be written:

Inge schenkt ihren Eltern mehrere Buchs.
Inge is giving her parents books.


Both of these however should be correct
grammatically.

that was my last question.
thank you very much for the help

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail


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## berndf

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Inge schenkt ihren Eltern eine Buchs.
> Inge is giving her parents books.


I am confused. We discussed before that there is no indefinite article in plural. Why do you put "eine" in front of the plural again? "Eine" (="one" or "a"/"an") in front of plural makes no sense. In addition, the plural form of "Buch" is wrong (German doesn't use "s" to form the plural, except in loan words and neologisms).


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## bluetoonwithcarrotandnail

Sorry,
I forgot,

Inge schenkt ihren Eltern Bücher.
Inge schenkt ihren Eltern mehrere Bücher.

Both mean,

'Inge is giving her parents books'


thanks.​


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## berndf

The second means 'Inge is giving her parents *several* books'


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## ABBA Stanza

bluetoonwithcarrotandnail said:


> Both mean,
> 
> 'Inge is giving her parents books'


Or (depending on context) _"Inge *gives* her parents books"_. For example, if it is a repeating event involving one or more (different) books each time.

Cheers,
Abba


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