An indefinite pronoun describes an indefinite number of things or people. Words such as "few," "some," "many," and "most" are indefinite pronouns. The German indefinite pronoun manch can be a bit difficult to translate when used as an adjective paired to noun.

The pronoun manch suggests "some" or "a few" things or persons—enough to be significant—but not "many" things or people, which inherently may suggest "most." The indefinite pronoun manch is usually translated as "some" when used in a plural sense:

Manche Menschen sind immer hungrig und werden nie satt.

Some people are always hungry and never get full.

Caption 33, Deutsch mit Eylin: Adjektive und ihre Gegenteile

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Manche Länder bilden auf der Rückseite ihre Königin oder ihren König ab.

Some countries depict their queen or their king on the reverse side.

Caption 7, Sparefroh-TV: Warum sehen die Euromünzen in jedem Land anders aus?

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You run into a problem, however, when you encounter manch used in a singular sense, because the indefinite pronoun "some" can only be used in the plural form in English. If you say "some man," you mean one single man, which is different than "some men." Even if you say, for example, "some person or another," which might at first seem singular because "person" is singular, by adding "or another" you are still referring in plural to two or more people.

If you try to translate the singular version of manch on Google Translate, it translates "some" correctly, but renders the noun and verb less literally as plural. Whereas if you translate the singular version of manch on DeepL, it keeps the noun and verb singular, but instead of using "some," it translates manch as "Many a..." This is problematic, because as we also discussed, manch implies the smaller proportion ("some") of those mentioned, not the larger proportion ("many").

Original German phrase using:
Mancher Finanzminister ist...

Google translation:
Some finance ministers are...

Deepl translation:
Many a finance minister is...

DeepL retains the singular of the noun and verb, but translates manch as "many," suggesting falsely "most" of the finance ministers, rather than "some" or "few," as the original German suggested. Because of the erroneous translation of manch as many, the less literal Google translation is the better compromise. There is actually no way to translate manch in German and retain this literal accuracy with the singular of the noun and verb, since in English, all indefinite pronouns such as "some" (or "a few of..." etc.) require a plural noun and verb.

Notice, in this next example, that Pflanze is singular and uses the singular verb form ist. In both examples, the singular noun and verb in German have had to be translated into the plural in order to get the correct meaning of manch:

Manche Pflanze, wie das flammende Indische Springkraut, ist grad erst bei uns eingewandert.

Some plants, such as the flaming Himalayan balsam, have migrated to our area only recently.

Caption 31, Die letzten Paradiese: Die Schönheit der Alpen

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Mancher Finanzminister der Länder ist der Meinung...

Some state finance ministers are of the opinion...

Caption 15, Angela Merkel: beim Nachhaltigkeitsrat

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It's a subtle difference, but when somebody with a large audience is making a statement that needs to be precise, such as (soon to be former) German Chancellor Angel Merkel, it can be an important distinction.

Further Learning
Go to Yabla German and look for videos using manch as an adjective before a noun. Then make up some German sentences using manch with a singular noun and verb, and practice translating them using "some" and changing the noun and verb to plural. Have your teacher or a fellow pupil or student check your work.

A "xenonym" is an external name for a geographical place, the people who live there or the language spoken there. For example, English speakers say "Germany" rather than Deutschland and "Munich" rather than München. The names of many countries in German are very similar to the English xenonyms. However, even if they sound almost the same, the spelling is often different. For example, we see in many names that a C converts to K (Canada is Kanada, Cameroon is Kamerun),  a Z to an S (Zimbabwe is Simbabwe, Zambia is Sambia) or a V to a W (Slovakia is die Slowakei). Of course, this may not be the only difference.

Jetzt ist deine Münze in der Slowakei.

Your coin is now in Slovakia.

Caption 23, Sparefroh-TV - Warum sehen die Euromünzen in jedem Land anders aus?

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Der Kea-Papagei stammt ursprünglich aus Neuseeland.

The Kea parrot comes originally from New Zealand.

Caption 19, Wettlauf gegen den Verfall - Beruf Präparator

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Another common pattern is an -ien ending. You can likely guess which countries Spanien, Italien, Serbien, Rümänien, Slowenien, Australien, Saudi-Arabien, Tunesien, and Kroatien are!
 

Hier haben wir zum Beispiel, äh, Rohkaffee aus Kolumbien.

Here we have, for example, uh, raw coffee from Colombia.

Caption 8, Kaffee - Noch von Hand gemacht

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Dabei haben die deutschen Titelverteidiger diese Woche eins zu zwei gegen Tschechien verloren.

And the German title holders lost one to two against the Czech Republic this week.

Captions 6-7, Fußball - U21-Nationalmannschaft

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There is also a small group of countries with names ending in -land in German, which don't necessarily match up with those that have this ending in English. 

Hm, in Griechenland ist es im Sommer sehr heiß.

Hm, in Greece it is very hot in the summer.

Caption 37, Jenny - Reiseziele

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Diese da ist aus Russland und diese hier ist eine alte Polaroid-Kamera.

This one here is from Russia and this one is an old Polaroid camera.

Caption 23, Drei Leute - beim Kofferpacken

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Further Learning
Check out this very thorough list of country names and get memorizing! Concentrate on the country names that sound less like the English versions or are easily confusable. On Yabla German you can see which require a definite article (such as die Slowakei above), as detailed in our previous newsletter, or which require one in English but not in German (such as Tschechien).