Monday, January 9, 2012

Help with German sentence?

In German, in the polite imperative you have use the pronoun. If you want a parallel from English, which you usually do not learn about in school but which is true nonetheless in real spoken English, we usually do the same in plural imperatives. That is, we usually say, Read this! to one person, but Read this, you guys! Read this, you two! Read this, kids! Cl read this! or some other words to that effect when we address a group of people, whereas Read this, you! is quite uncommon in the singular (and has a very special meaning). And this is true of many, though not all, languages. Why it is no one knows but it is a common fact that plural and/or polite imperatives are much more likely to require (or at least permit) the use of the subject pronoun than singular and/or informal ones.

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