Articlel before Word ' Fisch '
  • Even October 2012

    I came into two sentences ' Fisch esse ich gerne' or ' Heute haben wir frischen Fisch mit Reis.' why we don't put definite or indernite article here?

  • Grace_R October 2012
    Hmmm, I think we do the samething in English too.  Interesting question.

    1) I like (or enjoy) eating fish.
    You are not eating a fish or the specific fish in front of you right now...so you don't use ein or der.

    2) We have fresh fish with rice today.
    I am assuming that we have more than one fish (so we can't use ein) and they are all fresh (no specific fish, so no der).

    That's how I look at these sentences.  Hopefully that helps.
  • Christopher October 2012
    That's right, Grace. German (like English) can have bare noun phrases, in other words nouns without any articles. The semantics are as you've described them - generic, rather than specific.

    Like English, German doesn't like this with singular count nouns (book, chair, computer, etc.) Only plural count nouns (books, chairs, computers) or mass nouns (cotton, water, fish, meat, bread, rice...) work here.
  • Grace_R October 2012
    But I must say that it took me a while to get used to say "I am a teacher" in German: ich bin Lehrerin.  No eine here.
  • Even October 2012
    thank you Grace and Chris, i understood now.
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