Hey guys,

For all of you who are good at german, if you are using a past tense, how dod you add in an um...zu phrase? I know how to do them separately, just not together. The sentence that I currently have is;

" Wahrend die Ferien, habe ich eine kleine Kinder gehuten, um Geld zu bekommen"

Is this correct?

I'd say so! That's very impressive!

edit: I'm not very good at german grammar so don't hold me against it!

I have no idea, but just thought I'd let you know that it looks impressive

Call me stupid (and sorry if I'm wrong) but from what little German I know, shouldn't it be "to get", instead of "to got". I'm sorry, it may be that I don't know enough about past tense

Warend always takes the genetive - Warend *der* Ferien

Kind is neuter in the singular - *ein kleines* kind.

All plural's are feminine, so it would be *kleine kinder* if there were two of them.

"gehuten" not sure what that means - "Guarded" - babysitting??

Think the um...zu bit is OK, bekommen is the infinitive fiorm I think.

Think it may be better german to change the sentance structure a bit. This reads like a word for word translartion of an English sentance. Not to sure about this bit, German's a bit rusty these days!

Um Geld zu bekommen, habe ich wahrend der Ferien ein kleines Kind gehuten.

Lizzie: go on www.thestudentroom.co.uk

Its incredibly helpful!

I'd put the Um Ged zu bekommen bit at the beginning, but I don't think Wahrend der Ferien sounds right there.

I don't know where esle to put it, but itdoesn't sound right to me! (not saying that it isn't right!) If it#s babysitting, we got told that Ich habe Babysitting gemacht was better than other verbs, since it was more familiar.

My German is very rusty too - I thought the original sounded a bit 'English' but don't remember enough to be able to help. Reading StuMac's version though, it does definitely sound more German in word/phrase order (I think!)

Order is always "time, manner place"

In this case there's only time!

Ah, I miss German. Haven't done it for a year and I've forgotten the lot!

I thought I had forgotten everything, but I spent a couple of hours in Germany in the summer, and surprisingly could remember enough to order dinner. Although he handed it to me, and for a couple of seconds I was thinking... grazie... merci... no... ah! Danke shon.

[quote=purple dolphin,Sep 4 2005, 07:30 PM]
Hey guys,

For all of you who are good at german, if you are using a past tense, how dod you add in an um...zu phrase? I know how to do them separately, just not together. The sentence that I currently have is;

" Wahrend die Ferien, habe ich eine kleine Kinder gehuten, um Geld zu bekommen"

Is this correct?

[/quote

I would say

In den Ferien habe ich mehrere kleine Kinder gehutet, um etwas Geld zu verdienen
(if you looked after more than one child)

or

In den Ferien habe ich ein kleines Kind gehutet, um etwas Geld zu verdienen (if you looked after only one child)


'um' always takes the infinitive whatever tense you use but you can change the word order depending on emphasis

so..if you want to stress the fact that you wanted to earn some money in the holidays you could put that part at the beginning

Um etwas Geld zu verdienen, habe ich in den Ferien ein kleines Kind gehutet.

With an umlaut on the U of verhutet

'In den Ferien' is more natural than using wahrend. And it's gehutet not gehuten

And yes, if it's babysitting, the Germans use the English word
so you coulod even say

habe ich babygesittet!

Where most people get straight A*'s at GCSE, and A at A-level and go to Cambridge/Oxford!

I am an exception

I know however, that while this might be more "correct colloquial" German, all my German teachers have told us to avoid at anylengths using Germanified English words.

Not alwasy a good thing... my German exchange student couldn' understand why I wanted to take her "Einkaufen", when apparently for the wandering around town I had in mind "Shopping" would have made far more sense...

I love the way foreign languages have absorbed some of our vocabulary - Japanese is a great one for it! Bideo is video, rabu retta is love letter, terebi is short for television, wapuro is short for wordprocessor, etc. - great fun!

Reminds me of the time I asked a Japanese visitor where he was living while in London and he said

miru hiru

Took me ages to realise that he meant

Mill Hill

!!!

Why etwas Geld? Is that meant to be "some"?

Russian has borrowed loads of words and phrases and made them into verbs, and often all it is is a tranlisterated version of the word plus ovat'

Funnily enough the English words TEND (if I remember correctly) to be the posh high falutin' style, or at least some of them were... so some of our teachers and friends, who spoke NO English and therefore had no idea of the origin of the words, were really impressed when we used them, although to us they were easy.

The classic we came across in Russia was нокаутировать, pronounced "knockoutirovat'" which means "to knock out"....! and our teacher was impressed when we recognised it instantly...

My host-sister's boyfriend also had the delightful notion that we had borrowed lots of Russian words, I said "like Glasnost and Perestroika?" and he was meaning really obvious borrowed-from-English words (I forget exactly which) that he honestly thought we had borrowed from Russian

Have yopu read 'a clockwork orange'? The book's set in the UK in the not too distant future, and is written entirely in a made up 'youth culture' slang that's very heavily based on Russian.

Yes, I've heard that, though I haven't read it. I actually studied some of the language from it at some point, though I forget when/why! Lots of Russian and lots of gypsey language, from what I understood...

wonderful, aren't they!

and a shirt is a "shaatsu", and a smart, working-type shirt for men is known as a "wai-shaatsu", (white-shirt) so a men's smart, pink shirt would be a
pinku-wai-shaatsu.

Yes. I suppose it just sounds more natural to say 'etwas'. In English, as well, as it is a bit more fluent to say that you did child minding/baby sitting in the holidays 'to earn some money' rather then saying 'to earn money'

"Während der Ferien habe ich ein paar kleine Kinder gehütet, um Geld zu bekommen"



By the way, whatever your German teachers might say, it's absolutely fine to say gebabysittet, as long as you use the more formal phrase in writing.

May I suggest a slight alteration, though, purple dolphin:

"In den Ferien habe ich auf ein paar kleine Kinder aufgepasst, um Geld zu verdienen".