“ihnen” i need help with this… is this the same as “sie”? on the translation it say it is… im usinga portuguese translation…
preciso de ajuda!
Yes, ihnen/Ihnen is just the version of sie/Sie used in the dative case. In this lesson, it translates as ‘you’ in English.
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“Ihnen” means “to you (formal” or " to them", depending on the context.
“Ich wünsche ihnen einen schönen Tag” (literally: I wish to you a beautiful day)
“Ich habe ihnen meine Autoschlüssel gegeben” (I gave you my car keys OR I gave my car keys (to) them)
“Ich wünsche ihnen einen schönen Tag”
“Ich wünsche “sie” einen schönen Tag”
But is there a specific reason for the use of “ihnen” in this frage?
when do we use “ihen” or “sie”(formal), in this frage?
Danke!!
You use Ihnen in the dative case and Sie in the accusative case. There are some rules to determine whether you use accusative and when you use dative, but often it is just something you have to know on a case by case basis.
Die Pronomen passen sich dem Fall an und können darum nicht beliebig vertauscht werden.
“Ich wünsche “ihnen” einen schönen Tag” (“sie” kann hier NICHT verwendet werden!!)
j:-)
ok thank you very much… i gess i have to study the dative and acusative cases later… vielen danke!
"“Ich wünsche ihnen einen schönen Tag”
“Ich wünsche “sie” einen schönen Tag”
But is there a specific reason for the use of “ihnen” in this frage? "
I guess you mean “in this phrase”?
Like Russian, Latin, Romanian and other languages, German uses a “case”-system, where words and endings are changed depending on their role in a sentence.
Basically “Sie” is the formal version of “you” and “Ihnen” is the formal version of “to you”.
Ich sehe Sie - I see you
Ich gebe Ihnen Geld - I give money to you
I think you´ll have to listen and read A LOT and just get used to it. Getting a feel for German grammar is probably easier than trying to analyze it until it makes sense.
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I´m not sure if it makes sense to give grammar tables with German explanations to a beginner.
I found looking at grammar tables to be useful as a beginner.
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For a learner, such as myself, and especially for a beginner, the difference between accusative and dative is a continual (but not continuous) problem. Explanations like the one Paule gave above are very useful in a lot of situations, such as in sentences like
Ich gebe Ihnen Geld - I give money to you
Mir ist etwas eingefallen - Something has occurred to me
In other cases, trying to understand the difference between accusative and dative in terms of some consistent set of rules can be misleading or, at best, unhelpful, such as in sentences like
Kann ich Ihnen helfen? - Can I help you?
Ich erinnere mich… - I remember
Ich stelle mir vor - I imagine
Ich warte auf einen Zug - I wait for a train
Ich warte auf einem Zug - I am on top of a train and am waiting
I see no reason, given the standard rules that you learn from grammar books and German teachers, for the choices of accusative and dative in any of these sentences. It’s just something we have to put up with.
“Ich warte auf einem Zug” sounds wrong to me. That situation would be a person who sits on the roofs of a train and waits for somebody. Rather silly.
“Ich warte im Zug.” would be correct but you normally don’t wait for somebody in a moving object …
@nd71: Collins Beispiel “Ich warte auf einem Zug” rührt daher, dass jemand genau diesen Satz in einem früheren Thread verwendet hatte und der Unterschied zwischen “Ich warte auf eineM Zug” und “Ich warte auf eineN Zug” erklärt wurde. In diesem Beispiel wird sehr gut deutlich, dass der verwendete Kasus äußerst wichtig für die Bedeutung sein kann. Natürlich ist das Bild von jemand der “auf einem” Zug wartet sehr befremdlich, aber genau ist das Interessante hier.
Aber natürlich wartet jeder vernünftige Mensch IM Zug 
Why not? Maybe you are on a train and your friend decided to go to the toilet before you go to the restaurant to get a beer and a bratwurst. Could you not say ‘ich warte auf meinen Freund im Zug’?
"Aber natürlich wartet jeder vernünftige Mensch IM Zug "
Und warten die veruckte Menschen vor eimem Zug?
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Im Legoland kann man auf, im oder vor einem Zug warten, Geisteszustand spielt keine Rolle.
“I found looking at grammar tables to be useful as a beginner.”
You kinda ignored the "giving a German answer with a link to a grammar table with German explanations to someone who´s learning to say “Wie geht es Ihnen?”-part of what I wrote.^^
But yeah, grammar tables can be useful for some beginners. I´m not one of them.
When I was at the “How are you?”-stage in Japanese, they scared and confused me (“How am I supposed to learn all that?!?”), but after studying Japanese for a few hundred hours , they start to be more and more helpful. I find it much easier to understand grammatical explanations of conjugations and patterns that I´ve already seen at least a few hundred times “in nature”.
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Gut beobachet, Colin
I completely agree with you Paul. With German, I like the teach yourself or Assimil books, the simpler the better. “Relevant” grammar as needed, in order to understand. IMO those learning German really need to understand separable verbs for example relatively soon, in order to understand many sentences, otherwise they’d be very confused.