Breakdown of Schmecken dir süße Karotten?
schmecken
to taste
dir
you / to you [informal singular, dative]
die Karotte
the carrot
süß
sweet
Questions & Answers about Schmecken dir süße Karotten?
Why does the adjective süß have an -e ending here?
Here, süße Karotten is the subject of the sentence (nominative case) and it is plural. Because there is no article like die (the) or meine (my) in front of it, the adjective has to step up and show the plural form. For plural nouns with no article in the nominative case, we add -e.
Why is the verb schmecken and not schmeckst?
In English, we say 'Do you taste...', making 'you' the subject. But the German verb schmecken works backward from English: it usually means 'to be tasty to'. The subject of this sentence is actually the plural süße Karotten (sweet carrots). Since the carrots are doing the action of being tasty, the verb takes the plural ending -en.
If 'you' isn't the subject, why is it dir instead of dich?
The verb schmecken requires a dative object to express who the food is tasty to. Since it tastes good to you, we use the dative pronoun dir instead of the accusative dich.
The English translation says 'taste good', but I don't see a word for 'good' in the German sentence. Why?