A Foundation Course in Reading German, 2017a

Offline Textbook | A Foundation Course in Reading German
https://courses.dcs.wisc.edu/wp/readinggerman/print-entire-textbook/
Page 101 of 151
12/8/2017
wünschen
zögern
to wish
to delay
Note when translating such constructions that English sometimes requires the
gerund form (-ing) of the dependent verb:
Gestern fing es zu regnen an, und heute regnet es immer noch.
It started raining yesterday and it’s still raining today.
b. Infinitive clauses with nouns
Das ist ein Befehl, vorwärts zu ziehen.
That is a command to move forward.
Das ist ein Versuch, die neu entdeckten Mineralen zu untersuchen.
That is an attempt to test the newly discovered minerals.
c. The verb sein plus zu and an infinitive
In terms of how it is translated, this construction is quite different from those
above. Consider the following examples:
Dieses Buch ist zu lesen.
The book is to be read.
In Minnesota sind viele Seen zu sehen.
In Minnesota many lakes are to be seen.
It is sometimes more natural in English to express this meaning using a
passive voice construction with the modal verb “must” or “can.” We could
optionally translate the first sentence as “This book must be read,” or the
second as “In Minnesota many lakes can be seen.” In fact, the sich lassen
passive construction in 1. d) above carries a meaning similar to this
construction.
Note that the above two examples do not have an adjective as the predicate of
sein. When you do see an adjective there, the meaning will be easy to read,
since English uses this same construction to express the same meaning:
Dieses Buch ist schwierig zu lesen.
This book is hard to read.