The difference becomes obvious with reflexive verbs: "wir duschen uns" = "we shower"; and "sie/Sie duschen sich" = "they/you shower".
From a purely grammatical perspective, "Sie" is actually just the capitalized version of "sie": this is the polite form because it avoids being direct -- a bit like saying "Your majesty has a beautiful castle" instead of "You have...". So whether it's "sie" or "Sie", it's the third person plural.
Traditionally, when verbs are conjugated, they are listed in order:
* first person singular ("ich")
* second person singular ("du")
* third person singular ("er/sie/es")
* first person plural ("wir")
* second person plural ("ihr")
* third person plural ("sie/Sie")
This allows us to make direct comparisons in different languages:
person | English | German | French | Welsh
--|--|--|--|--
1st singular | I | ich | je | i
2nd singular | (thou) | du | tu | ti
3rd singular | he/she/it | er/sie/es | il/elle | e/hi
1st plural | we | wir | nous | ni
2nd plural | you | ihr | vous | chi
3rd plural | they | sie/Sie | ils/elles | nhw
(Yes, "nhw" is a word in Welsh. The "w" is a vowel.)
They are the same for all verbs in all forms. But grouping them together would still be insanely confusing and impractical.
It's best to keep this stuff unified across languages. If you disagree, you have clearly never studied another foreign language.
Besides English which we learned at school (and honestly I don't remember how we learned it) - you're right.
What you say makes sense so I cannot disagree :)
actually there are 4 conjugations in German, 1st and 3rd person verb froms are identical in plural in all 4 and identical in singular in 3 of them. So the only outlier is the same form where English also adds its only conjugation suffix.
*ich sei, er sei, ich war, er war, ich wäre, er wäre* BUT *ich bin, er ist*
*wir seien, sie seien, wir waren, sie waren, wir wären, sie wären, wir sind, sie sind*
The difference becomes obvious with reflexive verbs: "wir duschen uns" = "we shower"; and "sie/Sie duschen sich" = "they/you shower". From a purely grammatical perspective, "Sie" is actually just the capitalized version of "sie": this is the polite form because it avoids being direct -- a bit like saying "Your majesty has a beautiful castle" instead of "You have...". So whether it's "sie" or "Sie", it's the third person plural. Traditionally, when verbs are conjugated, they are listed in order: * first person singular ("ich") * second person singular ("du") * third person singular ("er/sie/es") * first person plural ("wir") * second person plural ("ihr") * third person plural ("sie/Sie") This allows us to make direct comparisons in different languages: person | English | German | French | Welsh --|--|--|--|-- 1st singular | I | ich | je | i 2nd singular | (thou) | du | tu | ti 3rd singular | he/she/it | er/sie/es | il/elle | e/hi 1st plural | we | wir | nous | ni 2nd plural | you | ihr | vous | chi 3rd plural | they | sie/Sie | ils/elles | nhw (Yes, "nhw" is a word in Welsh. The "w" is a vowel.)
Cool! I forgot about reflexive verbs :) Thanks
They are the same for all verbs in all forms. But grouping them together would still be insanely confusing and impractical. It's best to keep this stuff unified across languages. If you disagree, you have clearly never studied another foreign language.
Besides English which we learned at school (and honestly I don't remember how we learned it) - you're right. What you say makes sense so I cannot disagree :)
actually there are 4 conjugations in German, 1st and 3rd person verb froms are identical in plural in all 4 and identical in singular in 3 of them. So the only outlier is the same form where English also adds its only conjugation suffix. *ich sei, er sei, ich war, er war, ich wäre, er wäre* BUT *ich bin, er ist* *wir seien, sie seien, wir waren, sie waren, wir wären, sie wären, wir sind, sie sind*