English Translation
And the people? What will they say?
This is clearly “die [Leute]” with the omitted noun implied. Can someone provide other examples of when the article is preferred over the pronoun?
You can use the article if you want to stress the subject, often in opposite to another one.
“Im Radio war nichts. Und das Fernsehen, was sagt das?”
" …es." would not sound good here.
In these cases the article is used like and sounds like a demonstrative pronoun.
As a rule for the above sentence:
If you stress the “they” in the spoken English sentence, you will use the article in German.
2 Likes
English Translation
And the people? What will they say?
Maybe helpful. ChatGPT says " in this context, “die” is the correct pronoun for “they.” The use of “sie sagen” would not be appropriate here because “sie” is more specific and typically refers to a particular group of people or things, whereas “die” is more general and suitable for the context of asking about what “they” (in this case, people in general) will say."
It was explained to me years ago that when “die” is used to refer to a group of people, it’s not the definite article, but rather a contraction of “diese da” (them there).
“Was werden die sagen?” = what will they say?
It’s often used as a stand-in for “sie” if you’re referring to a group of people already in context in conversation.
1 Like