Breakdown of Was erzählt ihr einem Freund?
ein
a, an (eine)
ihr
you (informal plural)
der Freund
the friend
was
what
erzählen
to tell
Questions & Answers about Was erzählt ihr einem Freund?
Why do we say einem Freund instead of einen Freund?
The verb erzählen (to tell) usually involves two things: what you tell and who you tell it to. The person receiving the story takes the dative case. Since Freund is a masculine noun, its indefinite article ein changes to einem in the dative.
Wait, doesn't ihr mean "her"?
It can! The word ihr means "her" (or "to her") in certain contexts, but it is also the subject pronoun for "you" when talking to a group of people informally. Here, it is the subject of the sentence, meaning "you all".
Why is the verb erzählt before ihr?
In German questions that start with a question word like Was (what), the conjugated verb must always be in the second position. So Was is first, the verb erzählt is second, and the subject ihr comes right after it.
How do I know if erzählt means "he tells" or "you all tell"?
The verb forms for er/sie/es (he/she/it) and ihr (you plural) both end in -t. They look exactly the same! You just have to look at the pronoun in the sentence to know who is doing the action. Since ihr is right next to the verb, we know it is the "you all" form.
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