Questions & Answers about Ich finde deine Idee gut.
German finden has two common meanings:
Literal: to find (to discover, to locate)
- Ich finde meinen Schlüssel nicht. – I can’t find my key.
Opinion: to find something (to be) X → to think/feel/consider
- Ich finde deine Idee gut. – I think your idea is good / I like your idea.
In this sentence, finden is used in the second, opinion sense:
Ich finde etwas gut/schlecht/interessant … = “I think something is good/bad/interesting …”
The word order Ich finde deine Idee gut is normal German:
- Ich – subject
- finde – conjugated verb (2nd position)
- deine Idee – direct object
- gut – predicative adjective describing deine Idee
In German, the complement that describes the object (like gut) typically comes after the object.
Ich finde gut deine Idee is wrong in standard German word order. You might sometimes hear similar patterns in very colloquial or playful speech, but they are not standard and can sound foreign or odd. Stick with Ich finde deine Idee gut.
Not normally.
- Ich finde deine Idee sounds incomplete, as if you were literally saying “I find your idea” (as in: “I’ve found your idea somewhere”), which doesn’t make sense.
To express an opinion, you need something that describes the idea:
- Ich finde deine Idee gut / interessant / spannend / schlecht / super …
Without gut (or another adjective), finden is understood literally, not as “to think/consider”.
The form of dein- depends on:
- The gender and number of the noun
- The case of the noun
Here:
- Idee is feminine singular: die Idee
- In Ich finde deine Idee gut, Idee is the direct object, so it’s in the accusative case.
Feminine accusative ending: -e
So:
- deine Idee = your idea (feminine, accusative)
Other forms for comparison:
- Nominative feminine: deine Idee – Deine Idee ist gut.
- Dative feminine: deiner Idee – Mit deiner Idee bin ich einverstanden.
- Accusative masculine: deinen Plan – Ich finde deinen Plan gut.
In German, all nouns are capitalized, regardless of position in the sentence.
- Idee is a noun, so it must be written with a capital I: die Idee.
- This rule is not about importance or emphasis; it’s purely grammatical.
You will always write, for example: Haus, Auto, Wasser, Liebe, Idee with a capital letter.
Ich is capitalized here only because it is at the beginning of the sentence.
General rule:
- At the start of a sentence, the first word is capitalized: here it happens to be Ich.
- In the middle of a sentence, ich is normally not capitalized.
Example:
- Er sagt, dass ich deine Idee gut finde. – “He says that I think your idea is good.” (lowercase ich)
They are close in meaning but not identical in nuance:
Ich finde deine Idee gut.
- Literally: “I find your idea good.”
- Focus on an assessment/judgment: it sounds a bit more neutral or thoughtful.
Ich mag deine Idee.
- Literally: “I like your idea.”
- Focus on personal liking or preference, more emotional/subjective.
In many everyday contexts, they can be used interchangeably, but finden … gut sounds more like an evaluation, while mögen (mag) is more about liking something.
Yes, you can say:
- Ich denke, dass deine Idee gut ist. – “I think that your idea is good.”
This is grammatically correct and means basically the same. Differences:
Ich finde deine Idee gut.
- Very common, short, and idiomatic in spoken German.
- Slightly more casual and direct.
Ich denke, dass deine Idee gut ist.
- Feels more formal or reflective, like you’re explicitly stating a thought process.
Both are correct; Ich finde deine Idee gut is the more typical everyday phrasing.
Finde is 1st person singular, present tense of finden:
- ich finde – I find
- du findest – you find (singular, informal)
- er/sie/es findet – he/she/it finds
- wir finden – we find
- ihr findet – you (plural, informal) find
- sie finden – they find / you (formal) find
In Ich finde deine Idee gut, the subject is ich, so you must use finde.
Yes, deine is informal “your”, used with du.
For polite/formal Sie, you use Ihr-:
- Ich finde Ihre Idee gut. – “I think your idea is good.” (formal)
Here Ihre is capitalized to show it refers to the formal Sie.
In German, possessive determiners like mein, dein, sein, ihr, unser, euer, Ihr already function like articles.
You normally don’t combine them with another article:
- ✅ deine Idee – your idea
- ❌ die deine Idee (wrong in this sense)
- ❌ eine deine Idee (wrong)
You would only get something like die deine Idee in a very different structure, e.g.:
- Die, deine Idee, war wirklich gut. – “That one, your idea, was really good.” (apposition, special emphasis)
But as a normal noun phrase, just use deine Idee.
Deine Idee is in the accusative case because it is the direct object of finden.
- Verb: finden
- Subject: Ich (who is finding?)
- Direct object: deine Idee (what do I find?)
In German, the direct object is usually in the accusative. That’s why we have deine (feminine accusative) here.
Yes. German allows some flexibility for emphasis. For example:
- Deine Idee finde ich gut.
This puts deine Idee first for emphasis, something like:
“Your idea I think is good.” / “As for your idea, I think it’s good.”
The meaning is the same; the difference is in emphasis and style. Both are correct and natural German.