(I'd have used my original thread but I can't post twice in a row and editing wouldn't do much , since it doesn't bump the thread so I had to resort to creating a new topic...)

Old thread: Question for native english speakers Ok, uh, I've got another question ^^'' (It'd be amazing if someone would be willing to maybe friend me or pm me so that I don't litter the forum with my questions... thanks in advance!) Got my test back and it went really well (A) so thank you to everyone that helped me so far ヽ(゜∇゜)ノ ! Unfortunately , I made a mistake , or what counted as one. Same subject as before : Questions. I suspect, or know, really, that it's closely related to my first question. We were supposed to translate questions from my native language (which is german) into english , as before. The question I struggled with was : "the police catch a thief " turn the sentence into a question , asking after the thief (all of this was written in german , of course, the german sentence was : die polizei fängt einen dieb). I wrote: "Who does the police catch? " because I thought the "does" relates to the "Who" which is "the thief" which would be "he" and that only works with "does" , of course. But my teacher explained that it should be "do" because "who" refers to "the police" and, I'll be honest , I don't really get that >.< I really don't know what's correct here. It might well be "do" but I'd really like to understand , if that is the case, why that is... So, if someone could clear up and explain, again , I'd be really thankful ｡◕‿◕｡

I am a native speaker, I knew immediately that your sentence sounded wrong but I didn't have the actual rules why memorized so I looked it up. This page should hopefully clear up your questions.

That said, a native speaker would understand your proposed sentence, it would just sound strange.

Feel free to PM me if you have more questions. I've been dabbling with studying German for a long time and find linguistics to be very interesting and fun to discuss.

@ Thank you for answering! I was completely confused as to what sounded wrong or right >.< so thank you for saying it sounded wrong and why. I can usually tell , but this time , with this particular sentence just...nothing ^^'''' The page did help me understand what I did wrong ! I somehow thought of "the thief" as the subject instead of "the police" which really doesn't make any sense in that context...I don't know how I , logically, got there o.O'' and of course "do" refers to "the police" not to "who". We're doing latin , german(which I imagine to be even harder to learn as a non native speaker, so kudos!) and english grammar simultaneously at the moment so I probably got confused somewhere (⌒_⌒'') Thank you for the pm offer, I'll probably bother you again shortly ^.^' (I do plan on studying english and I'm hoping to add more languages to my résumé over time , so yes to the linguistics love ≧◡≦ )

I'm glad I could help. Despite all my years of German I haven't gotten very deep into it. The grammar I've dealt with has been tricky, but I have to say French is a bit harder than that :)

Explanation already given, but these are the correct questions: "Who do the police catch?" - police being plural so do used "Who does the policeman catch?" - policeman being an individual police person so no longer plural and does is accurate

"Who does the police catch?" is grammatically incorrect, but would get you the answer you need, if along with a slightly confused look. :)

Me and my husband love Germany and in Berlin were ordering a sandwich in a shop. I said a simple "Salami und Kase, bitte" and got my sandwich. My husband pulled out the most perfect, grammatically correct sentence, which totally impressed me, but he forgot the content of the sandwich so the sandwich maker was somewhat confused. He said something along the lines of "Can I please have some bread". So yes, grammar is important, but don't forget the meaning!

I don't speak any German, but I'm pretty good at English even for a native speaker. Something that helps a lot when trying to decide which nouns are the subject of a sentence is to look at the verb. In your example it was 'catch'. So, we have police, and a thief, and someone is catching something. The thief if probably not catching the police :D But it would make sense for the police to catch a thief. So by that logic, the subject must be the police, since they would be the ones doing the catching. It doesn't work for all sentences, but sometimes it's easier to figure things like that out logically, rather than grammatically (if that makes any sense at all XD). If you ever want to PM me with any other questions, that's fine with me, and I'll do my best to help.

Thank you for the more in depth explanation :-) I was on vacation and just saw your answer today , but still, sorry for the late reply >.< I do get it now. I feel that I would have gotten it on my own even, after a while, but I prefer to check with native speakers whenever possible. Now that I'm a bit more secure in my (german) grammar it's perfectly obvious and I feel quite stupid for having asked >.<''' Yes, asking for just bread in a sandwich shop would raise a few eyebrows :-D but most germans are pretty forgiving of mistakes like that (as long as you're a tourist or a foreigner) and are just happy to see someone taking an interest in germany/german ^.^ I'll say it again, kudos to you , your husband and anyone else learning german! Now that I have to relearn the german grammar, I have a newfound respect for anyone not native to the language that is trying to learn it. So. Frustrating! -.-' I much prefer english and latin grammar. I mean, I do love my native language but I could really do without having to know every single grammar rule to every single little word form or old fashioned quirk... Of course, being able to converse with other people and getting your meaning across is more important than flawless grammar , you're right :-) I've only been to london once (haven't been to america yet, unfortunatly) but my , at the time, rudimentary english got me pretty far ^.^'

Thank you :-):-) Now that I have two people to bother and annoy with my questions I don't have to spam the forum anymore ^.^'''' Your explanation made perfect sense , don't worry. I get it now :-) and that is a useful tip!