Osias wrote:linguoboy wrote:Osias wrote:Ich kenne eine
I know I don't have a verb like "I do" for answers like that, but I thought I could do like in Portuguese and just repeat the verb. Is repeating 'eine' mandatory or is it just because it sounds better?
The native speakers can correct me, but AFAIK, it's mandatory. Even though German maintains more verbal inflections than English, the rules for pronoun usage are very similar to those of English and not like those of most Romance languages. The subject can rarely be dropped and only in very limited circumstances. (Just like you can say, e.g. "Got no time" in English, you can say "Habe keine Zeit"; it's very informal and rude.) The circumstances where you can drop an object are even more limited. The only common example that comes to mind is when someone tells you something you can say, "I know" (bzw. "Ich weiss") even though
know and
wissen normally require complements. But the same thing doesn't work with
kennen. It's always transitive and requires an explicit direct object.
Actually, I can think of an exception: When the object is fronted, it can be dropped. That is: "Ja, das kenne ich schon." > "Ja, kenn ich schon. " Again, this is very informal (and I would consider it rude if you used it with someone you normally addressed with
Sie). And this reminds me that you
do have a pro-verb in German, just not one with the same range as English
do:
machen. I think it only works with action verbs (which excludes stative verbs like
kennen and
wissen), e.g. "Kannst du bitte dein Zimmer aufräumen?" "Ja, das mach ich.' And here the same rule about object deletion I mentioned earlier applies, namely that you can shorten this to "Mach ich". (
Tun can be used this way as well, but in general, I find it a less colloquial verb than
machen so it sounds a little odd to use it when the context is so very informal--though I don't feel the same about other uses of
tun, such as allowing fronting of the main verb, e.g. "Singen tun sie gern!")
tl;dr: Yeah, you need an object here.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons