Breakdown of Sehen Sie die Notiz, welche am Rand steht?
Sie
you (formal)
sehen
to see
stehen
to stand
am
on the / at the
die Notiz
the note
welcher
which (welcher, welche, welches, welchen, welchem...)
der Rand
the margin
Questions & Answers about Sehen Sie die Notiz, welche am Rand steht?
Why use welche instead of die in this sentence?
You could absolutely use die here! The sentence Sehen Sie die Notiz, die am Rand steht? is perfectly correct and much more common in everyday speech. welche is a stylistic alternative used almost exclusively in formal writing to elevate the register or occasionally to avoid repeating the word die.
How do we know to use the form welche and not welcher or welches?
A relative pronoun always gets its gender from the noun it points back to, which is die Notiz (feminine). It gets its case from its grammatical role in the new clause. Here, the pronoun is the subject of the verb steht, so it requires the nominative case. The feminine nominative form is welche.
Why does the sentence use steht (stands) for a written note?
In German, written words do not merely "exist" on a page; they conceptually "stand" (stehen). You will constantly encounter the verb stehen used for text on signs, in books, or in margins, whereas English would normally translate this as "is written", "says", or simply "is".
Why is "in the margin" translated using the preposition an (am Rand)?
The German word Rand literally means "edge" or "border". When referring to text placed in a page's margin, German treats it as being positioned "at the edge" (an dem Rand), rather than "inside" a margin like English does. Because the note's location is static (answering "where?"), the preposition an requires the dative case, causing an dem to contract into am.
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