Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Beale
And here we enter the minefield that is German grammar … I fully expect to be corrected by our German colleagues but here's what I remember from school: "zur" is a contraction of "zu der." "zu" takes the dative, so the "der" is feminine dative, not masculine nominative, and the presence of the definite article affects the declension of the ensuing adjective. So the phrase is either "zu besonderer Verwendung" or "zur besonderen Verwendung" but NOT "zur besonderer ..." or "zu besonderen …"
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Had a couple of years of university German myself and lived in Germany for nearly 5 years. But that was 100 years ago so I've forgotten many of the intricate pecularities of German grammar with all the well-concealed boobytraps and landmines. If you remembered all the stuff you posted above without reference to a German grammar book or Google, then you deserve to be knighted by both QE and Angela Merkel!!
L.