"I have left my book behind"
"Where have you left it ?"

Verlassen is the verb we are normally taught, but I'm not convinced it applies here..

Any suggestions ?
dave

Ich habe es liegen lassen.
Wo hast du es vergessen?

=DM=

ich habe mein buch zu hause (im büro...) gelassen.

wo hast du dein buch gelassen?

it's gelassen, not verlassen

with verlassen:
Sie müssen der Schweiz ohne Buch zu verlassen

Verlassen sounds a little strong, unless you dropped it in a fit of anger and don't want to see it again?

I'd go for hinterlassen or zürucklassen.

I'd also make sure that I put [German] in the subject line like we are supposed to...

Ich habe das Buch im Büro zurück gelassen
Ich habe das Buch im Büro liegen gelassen

These both seem ok, so i have just been told.
gelassen in the past participle of lassen.

dave

Good - but remove the space behind gelassen so both words become a single word. Thanks for the info about the past participle - we'll give you the verbs, but you should conjugate them As you know verlassen is the same in both present and past anyway.

Sie müssen der Schweiz zu verlassen, interestingly, is the core sentence of the letter you get when you're no longer welcome here

Anyone else received one of these?

I seem to remember that there is same anomalies as to whethere you use "gelassen" or "lassen" as the past participle. I'll try and look it up.
dave

Incidentally, it is common to omit the "zu" before the infinitive in sentence that use modal verbs....ich muss Deutsch lernen....

but take care. if you use gelassen as an adjective, it means "relaxed"

I tried to tell him in a PM... ok - let the reputation points fly now...

yeah yeah. I'll scan the letter tomorrow and you will all either weep or laugh.

I can live with no green dots and lots of pretty stars

You might be thinking about when you have a compound word for example:

hinterlassen -> hintergelassen
vorweisen -> vorgewiesen
verlassen -> verlassen
entnehmen -> entnommen

The secret lies with separable verbs. If you would separate the beginning in a sentence where the verb is on its own (Weisen Sie Ihrer Ticket vor) then you can slide a ge in there. If not - no ge. Inseperable verbs start with be, er, ver, zer, ent, emp, ge, wieder, über

Liegengelassen is an interesting one as there is never a case where it cannot be replaced with liegenlassen at least to the very best of my knowledge

Ja, ich nicht, aber wass hast du getan um so einen Brief zu bekommen?

Wissen die Fremdenpolizei das du so einen Brief bekommen hast?

Sorry, but I thought that was kinda funny!

[German] Does anyone know a website or similar on-line resource to brush up on financial Business German. Is there an equivalent to Business English courses in German. I had to translate some legal documents recently, it was very confusing.Then I got a native speaker to help me, he had the same problems. I love using http://babelfish.altavista.com, in combination with a dictionary. Any pointers for Business German that might come up in interview?

Ich habe mein Buch vergessen
Wo haben sie Ihr Buch verlassen
But im not the best at German or English when i think about it.

DC