Two Orange Juice, Please.

Bahasa Indonesia - Deutsch

In the book of studio d A1 Deutsch als Fremdsprache Kurs- und Uebungsbuch (Berlin: Cornelsen Verlag, 2006) there are sentences in dialogues, which surprised me. There are nouns which have plural, however they stay singular.

The sentences are for example as follows:

Zwei Orangensaft, bitte.

Also drei Eistee.

Zwei Cola.

The numbers two and three mean plural, but why aren't the nouns in plural? The sentences should be 2 Orangensaefte, 3 Eistees and 2 Colas.

Then I asked my friends in Germany. (I consider all friends :-) ) I wanted to know what they say about this.

Mrs Engelhardt in Karlsruhe:

There is no logical reason for that. It is already naturalised. It is just not common, if people say: "2 Orangensaefte, 3 Eistees, 2 Colas".

Ulli in Hamburg:

It must be correct, what you have written: 2 Orangensaefte, 3 Eistees, 2 Colas. In the book it is clearly the daily usage (which is not correct). Although it is not correct grammatically, in fact it is so spoken. An extreme example is "4 Currywurst Pommes!". It is the language of very simple people. :-)

So, if it is so simple, the examiners of a particular language institute, which has the right to issue a valid language certificate, shouldn't fail my students. It is now not different: Zwei Orangensaft - Zwei Orangensaefte, Drei Eistee - Drei Eistees, Zwei Cola - Zwei Colas.

It wouldn't be good, if my students wouldn't pass the exam and therefore they wouldn't get the language certificate, only because of this case. How unfair it would be.


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Please read text 26: Alex' Guitar
Back to text 24: These Nouns Have No Plural? I See.