SONOG & KhabarNepal Forum

I was reading the story 'Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten' on the other page. Is 'der' here a relative pronoun and if so, why isn't the verb at the end?

Khai I cant explain hope our German members will be able to explain.

1). Dialect. It is common in colloquial German to not always put the verb at the end.

2). Instead of commas, use dashes:

Es war einmal ein Mann, der hatte einen Esel, welcher schon lange Jahre unverdrossen die Säcke in die Mühle getragen hatte.

Es war einmal ein Mann, der einen Esel hatte, ...
There was once a man who had a donkey...

Es war einmal ein Mann - der hatte einen Esel,
There was once a man - he had a donkey

Remember, "der" can be interchangeable with "er" in colloquial German. I believe this is what is going on here.

Another point is, that this is a children's story: easy sentences with a simple structure.

I don't know how the grammar would have interpreted when the story was written, but you can read it as demonstrative pronoun instead of relative pronoun:

Es war einmal ein Mann, der (dieser) hatte einen Esel.

instead of

Es war einmal ein Mann, der (welcher) einen Esel hatte.

Then the word order is perfectly OK.

At Sangita: Children's stories may use simple grammar but not wrong grammar. Interpreted as relative pronoun the word order would be incorrect.

But it is indicative of a children's story (or even a fairy tale) if you ask me. When I encounter a sentence such as 'er traf einen Mann, der hatte einen Esel' (leaving out the obvious 'es war einmal' phrase) in isolation, I still get the feeling it is part of a fairy tale.

Could you also explain what a demonstrative pronoun is? One of my books say that it corresponds to 'the one/this one/that one' in English.

So, the sentences would read roughly in English as:

Es war einmal ein Mann, der (dieser) hatte einen Esel.

There was once a man, that man had a donkey,...

instead of

Es war einmal ein Mann, der (welcher) einen Esel hatte.

There was once a man who had a donkey,...

which pretty much has the same meaning in English, but I don't know about in German..

You said in your message: I don't know how the grammar would have interpreted when the story was written, but you can read it as demonstrative pronoun instead of relative pronoun:

Are demonstrative pronouns and relative pronouns interchangeable then or is it only in fairy tales that this can happen? I don't really understand in which two ways the sentence can be interpreted..

Outside of fairy tales, can I write the following sentence in two ways?

der Mann, der heute zu uns kommt (interpreting as relative pronoun)

der Mann, der kommt heute zu uns (interpreting as demonstrative pronoun)

Biswas Wrote:But it is indicative of a children's story (or even a fairy tale) if you ask me. When I encounter a sentence such as 'er traf einen Mann, der hatte einen Esel' (leaving out the obvious 'es war einmal' phrase) in isolation, I still get the feeling it is part of a fairy tale.

Correct, it's a fairy tale style and maybe slightly archaic but it's not ungrammatical. I just wanted to point out that the word order wasn't chosen for simplicity nor would any children's book violate the rules of word ordering for that cause.

German sikna yehi aye hudo rahicha tyo in free ma.

Gitta, Your translations are perfect. Demonstrative pronoun can be translated as "pointer pronouns" and I think that says it all. The relative pronoun is used in relative clauses (hence the name) to refer to persons or objects in the main clause. If you use "dieser" instead of "welcher" the interpretation is a bit different. In both the English and the German version you actually string two main clauses together and you could use a full stop instead of a comma. Thus the word order in the German version is that of a main clause, not of a relative clause as for the relative pronoun. Using "dieser" (or diese, diesem, dieses, ...) or "welcher" (or ... ) is more literal style than spoken language, where both are normally replaced by the definite article of the correct gender and case. Gramatically they remain pronouns of course and the sentence structure and thus also word order is not affected by this replacement.

Note that you of course cannot replace "welcher" in a question ("Welcher Mann hatte einen Esel?") because here it isn't used as a relative pronoun.

1. "Der Mann, der kommt heute zu uns."
"The man, he comes visiting us today."
2. "Der Mann, der heute zu uns kommt ... (ist ein Freund von mir)."
"The man who comes visiting us today ... (is a friend of mine)."

I think the English translations explain almost everything. The first sentence is a complete sentence that is not incorrect but sounds a bit awkward due to the repetition. But in the second case you open a relative clause ("der heute zu uns kommt") without completing the main clause "Der Mann ..." so the sentence has to go on somehow.