English to German Translation- Help!!

Factual Questions
1

I’m working on a Valentine’s present for the boyfriend, who is a Marine. I want to do a play on the “Teufel Hunden” name (I know that Teufel Hunden is grammatically incorrect, but I ain’t arguing with the USMC), where I have a label on a photo of our cat that says “Devil Dog’s Pet” in German.

I know that the German word for pet is haustier, but I have no idea how to put it all together, especially with the built-in grammar issue.

Thoughts?

2

Because of the grammatical issue I think you’re probably going more for Denglish rather than correct German anyway so I would think Teufel Hunden’s Haustier would get the point across. Or you could use the genitive - Haustier des Teufel Hunden.

But my German sucks, so I’m sure you’ll get better responses soon enough.

3

Just missed the edit window but I wanted to add that there’s no possessive apostrophe in German. That’s why I mentioned it was Denglish.

4

So the grammar of Teufel Hunden is all messed up. For your purposes I would suggest just Teufel Katze. Devil Cat. This is also wrong, as it should be one word, but it’s kind of cute.

5

You could also say “Das Haustier von den Teufel Hunden”, which would actually be correct, if a bit clunky (Das Haustier der Teufel(s)hunde" would be better).

Or compound the heck out of it and go with Teufelhundenhaustier.

6

I’d leave out the apostrophe, and use it as a noun adjunct. In other words, it becomes Devil Dog pet. If you want, stick a “The” in front of it.

7

You can also use “Haustier von Teufel Hunden”. I think this would be more common for “everyday” German. I’d probably use Moe’s genitive “Haustier des Teufel Hunden” though.

8

This needs an article: Haustier von den Teufel Hunden. That’s assuming that Teufel Hunden is actually intended to be plural; if it is a singular masculine (der Teufel Hunden, as the previously mentioned option des Teufel Hunden suggests) then it becomes Haustier vom Teufel Hunden (*von *+ *dem *is contracted into vom). Of course, if it is a singular masculine noun, then the genitive of that noun does take a -s suffix: Haustier des Teufel Hundens.

9

Whew. German is a weird language. :smiley: Thanks to everyone for weighing in!!

So, the Devil Dog is singular masculine (one Marine boyfriend, because really that’s all I can handle… :wink: ), and the pet is a singular female cat (but I’d still like to stick with ‘pet’ instead of cat). Where exactly does that leave us?