Sind Sie als politischer Flüchtling anerkannt?

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Frisian

Banned
English - America
Hi. If I wanted to ask a lady "Sind Sie als politischer Flüchtling anerkannt?" would I change it to "politische"? Thanks! :)
 
    • M

    manfy

    Senior Member
    Singapore
    German - Austria
    Frisian said:
    Hi. If I wanted to ask a lady "Sind Sie als politischer Flüchtling anerkannt?" would I change it to "politische"? Thanks! :)
    Click to expand...
    No! The noun 'Flüchtling' only exists in masculine form - and contrary to other nouns like 'Arzt -> Ärztin', you cannot turn it into a feminine form.
    Off the top of my head, it seems, all nouns with the suffix -ling are masculine in German.
     
    elroy

    elroy

    Imperfect Mod
    Chicago, IL
    US English, Palestinian Arabic bilingual
    No. Sie is nominative and the object of als has to agree.
    1. Sind Sie (nominative) als politischer Flüchtling anerkannt?
    2. Die Behörden haben Sie (accusative) als politischen Flüchtling anerkannt.
    3. Die Behörden haben Ihnen (dative) als politischem Flüchtling geholfen.
    4. Der Staat hat des Mannes (genitive) als politischen Flüchtings gedacht.
    I believe that nominative is sometimes used in sentences like 2-4, but the opposite (i.e. a non-nominative case in a sentence like 1) does not occur.

    By the way, your proposed option (politische) cannot work with Flüchtling regardless of case since Flüchtling is masculine singular, and politische is either plural or feminine singular.

    EDIT: Oops! Just saw manfy's reply (we cross-posted) and re-read the OP and saw the "a lady" part! Now I understand the reason for the question, which manfy has satisfactorily answered. I'll leave my answer in case it's useful in some other way.
     
    M

    manfy

    Senior Member
    Singapore
    German - Austria
    :thumbsup:
    If you ever need to genderize such words that only exist in one grammatical gender, you usually do it with adjectives, e.g:
    "Weibliche Flüchtlinge haben es schwerer bei der Integration als männliche."
    or singular: "Ein weiblicher Häftling ist heute aus der Strafvollzugsanstalt XY geflohen." -> article and adjective are inflected based on der Häftling.
     
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