"geht's" Why is it dative? Why the apostrophe?

[RonSMeyer]

Questions about "geht's", "geht es".
Ok...I have this sentence in a lesson "Meinen Mitbewohnern geht's schlecht, ihr Auto ist kaputt."

1. My first question is what makes this dative? I cannot find "gehen" on any list of German dative verbs. Yet, every exercise I come across uses "geht's" in the dative case. Why?

2. Why the apostrophe? Yes, I know it is a contraction of "geht es", but ins is a contraction of "in das"; im is a contraction of "in dem"; zur is a contraction of "zu der". They don't use an apostrophe. No other contraction I've run across uses the apostrophe, like English does. In fact, DUO specifically has told us that German does not use an apostrophe in contractions. Yet, here is "geht's" using an apostrophe. Why is it that "geht's" is seems to be unique in using the contraction apostrophe?

[DmGabin]

1. It is not about the verb, it is about the fact that meine(n) Mitbewohner(n) is an indirect object here.
2. Just a tradition.

[Cifi]

(1) This usage works differently from "gehen" to describe a movement. It's strictly impersonal and uses dative to indicate who it is about, just as you said. It's very common to ask/talk about somebody's state:

Wie geht's dir?
Geht es ihm gut?

Similar in terms of construction would be e.g.

• es gefällt mir
• es bekommt mir
• es gelingt mir

(though these are not strictly impersonal)

(2) While we normally don't use apostrophes with names indicating possession (Peters Haus) nor when contracting prepositions and articles (ins Bett gehen), they are used when the neutral pronoun es is shortened to s after a verb:

• So klappt's mit dem Nachbarn
• Wer hat's erfunden?
• Ich hab's vergessen

(It doesn't seem to be required anymore though, but I'd still use it.)

[pawndemic]

1. Why the apostrophe? Yes, I know it is a contraction of "geht es", but ins is a contraction of "in das"; im is a contraction of "in dem"; zur is a contraction of "zu der". They don't use an apostrophe.

In German normally you have to put apostrophe when you apply a contradiction, e.g.

• Ku'damm (for Kurfürstendamm, a big street in Berlin)
• M'gladbach ( for Mönchengladbach)

However, there are some sorts of contradiction where it is very clear what it means. as

• gehts (for geht es)
• aufm (for auf dem, more colloquial)

Therefore there is the recommendation to abstain the use the apostrophe, unless that would be cause a confusion.

And be carefull, there is by no means an apostrophe, if there is a posession s or an genitive s.

• Das ist Lisas Tasche.
• Das ist das Bett des Babys.

[Seiryuu]

I find it helps to literally translate wie geht's to "how goes it". Expanding it to include a person, such as wie geht's dir, could be translated to "how goes it for you".

[FrankReynolds69]

Das Apostroph ist optional und die Schreibweise "Wie gehts" ist absolut korrekt und zulässig nach deutscher Rechtschreibung.

[Chrisinom]

The apostrophe in "geht's" does not indicate a contraction but an omission. In these cases the apostrophe is correct, although it's not always used. In today's spoken German you usually say "geh'n" instead of "gehen". Here, like in similar cases, people write "gehn", too.

[rudi]

The apostrophe in "geht's" does not indicate a contraction but an omission. In these cases the apostrophe is correct, although it's not always used. In today's spoken German you usually say "geh'n" instead of "gehen". Here, like in similar cases, people write "gehn", too.

Even in the famous newscast "Tagesschau", whose speakers have a perfect pronunciation, they say "gehn" instead of "gehen".
I would even go so far as to claim that when someone literally says "gehen", it is either a dialect speaker who desperately wants to speak "High German" and doesn't realize the strangeness to say the form "gehen", or someone who is learning the language.

By the way: A native speaker who speaks dialect sounds strange when he uses "gehen". But it's completely different, if you're learning the language. We will understand and be very fine with it. Not only here in the forum. I think that's the way the vast majority of us does

[Chrisinom]

I agree. I would like to add that it's not only a question of hyper correctness when dialect speakers say gehen. It may also have to do with the fact that dialects maintain older forms of language. One example: The Baden dialect has not realized the diphtongization of the long i-vowel that distinguishes New High German (Wein) from Middle High German (win). Thus Weißwein is wiiswii in Baden. Likewise, the monophtongization of Middle High German (liebe gute brüeder) has not been realized in southern German dialects (liab, guet).

[Chrisinom]

@MoniqueMaRie An example of hyper correctness in the Napolitan dialect for you: The adverb to bad in Italian is "male". Napolitans, who often get the adverbs wrong, say "malamente", per non fare brutta figura. And they even use it as a noun: An evil person is "'o malamente".

[rudi]

I would like to add that it's not only a question of hyper correctness when dialect speakers say gehen. It may also have to do with the fact that dialects maintain older forms of language.

Yes, indeed. Thats mostly a thing of the southern dialects, right?
The dialects and their origin is such a interesting topic.

@MoniqueMaRie An example of hyper correctness in the Napolitan dialect for you: The adverb to bad in Italian is "male". Napolitans, who often get the adverbs wrong, say "malamente", per non fare brutta figura. And they even use it as a noun: An evil person is "'o malamente".

Interesting and nice to see that other people have the same problems.

[Chrisinom]

@rudi People from Northern Germany usually speak standard German because their dialect is not understood by other Germans. The northern dialects, or better, the Low German language belongs to an even older state of the German language. The High German sound shift happened roughly around 600. Low German is pretty similar to earlier states of the English language. Here's a website about Low German: https://storylearning.com/learn/german/ ... low-german