Thanks for the explanation of *es gibt". I don't know where I got *es geben* from. I 'll take your word for it that there are no contractions of verb forms in Standard German but what about non-standard regional dialects (High vs. Low German) both in Germany and abroad (Austria, Switzerland, Alsace, the Netherlands, the Baltics, etc.); the speech of the uneducated and other low-class sociolects; not to mention the old-fashioned German spoken by various emigrant groups like the *Wolgadeutschen* and *Russlandmennoniten* in Russia, the Old-Order Amish and Mennonites (who both speak what is called "Pennsylvania Dutch" in the US), and elsewhere? Like Spanish *hay* there's only one form in Russian ( есть *yest'*) and the similar-sounding but linguistically-unrelated Hebrew ( יש *yesh*) as well. Voragh -----------------------------------Original Message---------------------------------------- From: tlhIngan-Hol On Behalf Of luis.chaparro@web.de Voragh:

Lieven & De'vId, is there similar confusion in colloquial or regional German between "es gibt" and "es geben"? For that matter, are there any contractions of verb forms at all? There are in Yiddish, cf. for example https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/48848424/contractions-in-yiddish

Maybe I can help here. In German there is only the form *es gibt* for *there is / are*. It's a fixed structure, where *es* is a 3rd person singular subject (but with no semantic meaning here) and therefore the verb always remains singular (*gibt*). It takes an accusative object: *Es gibt einen neuen Film* (*There is a new movie*) *Es gibt zwei neue Filme* (*There are two new movies*) There are no contractions of verb forms like in English. By the way, in Spanish there is also only one form (*hay*) for singular or plural.