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Although I have asked a similar question before I am going to try again to improve my understanding. A recent Slow German podcast has the sentence

Einstein unterrichtete an der deutschen Uni in Prag und wurde österreichischer Staatsbürger.

I wondered why this is not

Einstein unterrichtete an der deutschen Uni in Prag und wurde ein österreichischer Staatsbürger.

So I looked for other examples of the use of the word Bürger. Google Translate translates "He became a citizen." as

Er wurde Bürger.

But DW has the following titles

Ein Bürger erteilt Boris Johnson eine höfliche Abfuhr

and

Ein Bürger dieser Stadt

It looks as if the verb werden implies the lack of an indefinite article with Bürger. So I tested the following sentences in Google Translate and could not find consistency.

He became a citizen. Er wurde Bürger.

He became a father. Er ist Vater geworden.

He became a fish. Er wurde ein Fisch.

He became a manager. Er wurde Manager.

He became an athlete. Er wurde ein Athlet.

It is not clear to me when to use an article and when not.

1 Answers1

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We use the zero article when refering to peoples profession, occupation, origin coupled with the usage of the verb "sein", "werden", bleiben", in the so-called "copula phrases". E.g.

Ich bin Pole. Er ist Schwede.

or

Ich bin Ingenieur

We may compare such copula propositions like "Ich bin Amerikaner" with the English "I'm American". German just goes a few steps further, beyond this similarity.

There might be exceptions where you want to specifically underline the idea that "I'm one of them", i.e. saying "Ich bin ein Bürger" you are basically saying "I'm one of the citizens", so you are not just telling who you are, but explicitly underlying what group of people you belong to. However, as a DaF student you can safely forget about ever using the indefinte article when speaking about somebody's occupation or nationality, along with familiar relationships etc (you'll find more info about this usage cases in your previous question's answers).

When speaking not about yourself, but about some 3d person, unknown to you, and if this is not a copula sentence using "sein" or "werden" or the like, we take the indefinite article - much like in English.

Ein Ingenieur stand auf und aüßerte sich gegen den Bauplan

As for testing anything with Google translate, you should be aware that it does produce wrong translations, relying to a great extent on the statistical approach to machine translation. For instance, you'll see all kind of genders not present in the initial text depending on the source and destination language, etc.

Dan
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  • Werden, bleiben, and other coupler verbs work just like that. Their argument isn't an object but a predicative – a property assigned to the subject. Much alike an adjective, even if it's a noun. – Janka Oct 05 '19 at 23:04
  • @Janka, thanks for the insights. The term eluded me somehow at the moment of writing. I've added this to the answer. – Dan Oct 05 '19 at 23:10