Two questions on "Ich will etwas warmes zu Trinken.&quo

Hi Nathalie, In the transcript for lesson 1.2 Kaffee trinken, there is the sentence"Ich will etwas warmes zu Trinken.". I've got a couple of questions. Firstly, is "Trinken" definitely meant to be capitalised? It looks like a verb in this context. Secondly, is it at all possible to leave out "zu" from this sentence? Trinken already means "to drink" doesn't it? Thanks in advance for your help! Tim

Hello,

timbuc ‐ 7 years ago

Hi Nathalie, In the transcript for lesson 1.2 Kaffee trinken, there is the sentence"Ich will etwas warmes zu Trinken.". I've got a couple of questions. Firstly, is "Trinken" definitely meant to be capitalised? It looks like a verb in this context. Secondly, is it at all possible to leave out "zu" from this sentence? Trinken already means "to drink" doesn't it? Thanks in advance for your help! Tim

 

An old thread but may I please ask why warmes is not capitalized here but in every lesson it is written as Warmes?

For example here: http://members.rocketlanguages.com/lessons/54

Etwas Warmes zu trinken Something warm to drink

Also, did anybody ever answer Tim's question about zu?

Thank you,

Jason

 

ps The new forum quote feature still isn't working. Do we have an ETA on getting this forum back online at 100%?

Hi Jason,

I didn't ever get an answer to the question. I'd forgotten all about it! Looking at the lesson again now, it looks like they have changed Trinken to trinken. I'm guessing Warmes is capitalised since it represents a noun. If the noun was present, then it'd be warmes and the noun itself would be capitalised. 

I still don't know about the zu thing...

Best of luck.

Tim

I see. Well, I will try to find an answer. Seeing how poorly maintained this forum is, I almost think Rocket Languages should move all the content over to StackExchange and stop this service altogether. I prefer the StackExchange platform because it allows us to vote on answers and seems better managed for creating a valuable knowledgebase.

Here, I have no way of knowing if somebody's question was answered. over there, they mark the questions as concluded and then you vote if the answer was helpful to you if you come across it again.

Plus the bloody thing actually works. Here, most of the tools are broken.  

Thanks for the tip Jason, I'll check out Stack Exchange.

Yeah this Rocket forum has never been very active.

 

Hi Tim,

Sorry that your question was forgotten. 

It is correct in the lesson as "Ich will etwas Warmes zu trinken." as "Warmes" is a noun. You can also say "Ich will Etwas zu trinken." and "etwas" becomes the noun.

As you noted Tim "trinken" already means "to drink" and it is possible to say "Ich will etwas Warmes trinken."

Regards

Paul

 

 

Thanks Paul.  I understand you are busy with a lot on your plate, but it is great to have a native expert resolve these questions instead of having us thresh about for too many exchanges.  Unfortunately, the answer to these questions is often very slow in coming so some of us with a couple of years of study under our belt will attempt an answer.  That is fine, and I enjoy doing it when I think I know the answer but final confirmation needs to come from an authority.  

I don't know anything about Stack Exchange, but to Jason's point about a better way of handling forum questions and answers, I have to agree.

Somebody reading this might wonder about Byron's response.  Paul had made a point about the workload that landed in my email box with a link to this post.

I mentioned the stack exchange out of frustration because even if I answer a question I don't know if I really helped anybody or was the right answer. For example:

• Link: http://members.rocketlanguages.com/members/forum/german-grammar/a-case-in-point-accusative
• Link: http://members.rocketlanguages.com/members/forum/german-grammar/akkusative-vs-nominative

About Stack Exchange: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_Exchange

Link to German Stack Exchange Beta: http://german.stackexchange.com/

Statistics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_Overflow)

A 2013 study has found that 77% of users only ask one question, 65% only answer one question, and only 8% of users answer more than 5 questions. As of 2011, 92% of the questions were answered, in a median time of 11 minutes.

So, that is why I mention stack exchange. 11 minutes to get a question answered and we know if the answer is any good because we can vote on it.

As for the amount of work problem, personally, I figured that "Paul Weber" wasn't a real person and could even be 15 part-time students that answer German questions on this forum from the Paul Weber email address. This is very common on the internet, because we can't possibly believe that only one person has time to keep up.  

Joined: Oct 13, 2010
Total Posts: 372
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Now that I look at this, I see that Rocket Languages only uses the Paul Weber account to answer about one question each month (5 questions in 6 months), right? Or we can take 372 post and divide that by 7 years x 12 months per year to get 4.42 posts per month.

Sorry Paul, if you are real, it's nothing personal. I'll buy you a big German beer and apologize if we ever get the chance to meet. If there are 15 of you, you can share the beer. Have you seen the photo that Rocket Langauges used for you in your letter: 

https://www.rocketlanguages.com/images/german/photos/xpaul-weber-180px-wide.png.pagespeed.ic.0j0RVSvMSA.png

Doesn't look like a real person to me. Looks like a cartoon. And while you are there, you might want to ask support why this page doesn't load anymore in Chrome:

https://www.rocketlanguages.com/german/plus/

There it says: "I am always happy to get constructive feedback on our products, so that we can make the Rocket German experience even better for you!" - Paul Weber

I have learned a lot and I have two more packages to go now that I am almost finished with the Premium. I love the product but I would like to see you guys focus your effort on the quality of the course. The past few weeks I see the forum getting an upgrade and it doesn't need one. It needs other improvements (linking to lessons, linking to audio clips, ways to see if people have gotten an appropriate answer to their question, ways to turn on and off email feedback, better searches, ways to thank and reward people for good answers and helpful contributions, etc.). When I see the developers that were hired to upgrade the forum struggling with installing their keyboard features and shutting down the site for hours when other students like me are trying to use it, I would ask them to leave and give you back any money they have taken from you.

I do not know if Stack Exchange is an option for Rocket Languages. I do not know if they have policies that prevent Rocket Languages from accomplishing  bigger plans if they were to use it. But I would love 11 minute response times to questions and like Byron, I like to get a quality feedback from an authority or have the community vote up my answer and get credit for that time and effort that I put into responding.

-Jason

Because Stack Exchange (SE) allows you to promote your product via their site, this may help drive more business to Rocket Languages and because they offer many (and perhaps all) of the languages you offer, you will have a forum option for all of Rocket Languages. Your forum remains here for product bugs and to communicate product changes. The SE forum is there to help off-load your Q&A process.

This explanation may help the decision: http://german.stackexchange.com/help/product-support.

Of course they offer advertising and you can setup a tag for your product so that people can ask questions about it. Seems rather nice to me.

I would guess that by simply having your students post questions there with links to your lessons, that some people will purchase the lessons to learn more.

Some examples for this particular question:

1. Ich will etwas Warmes trinken
2. Ich will etwas Warmes zu trinken

Why Warmes is capitalized: 

• Link: http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/adding-es-to-adjectives-after-etwas

Usage of zu in a phrase: 

• Link: http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/7896/infinitive-with-zu-after-modal-verb?rq=1
• Link: http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/9400/the-preposition-zu-with-infinitives?rq=1
• Link: http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/8261/um-zu-in-finding-spending-time-to-learn-german/8269#8269

Interesting speculation Jason.  I agree there are a lot of students helping with the course and most of them aren't truly bilingual.  Either their English is pretty bad or their German is a little shaky.  I have commented on some really horrible translations which were corrected before you started this course.  However, I tend to think Paul is genuine.  Rocket likes to run lean as CEO Jason O has mentioned several times.  The problem is they have grown faster than the staff can keep up with.  This is why even today, you still see so many errors and slow responses by experts like Paul.  However, I still think it's an excellent product for the money and I'm having fun with it.