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fluentu.com/blog/german/learn-german-word-order/
The German word order, when you translate it literally into English, comes out looking like some kind of bizarre, Shakespearian knot that
needs serious untying.
It’s one of the many obstacles that need to be overcome for German learners.
Hopefully, this post can help you tame German word order.
1. Learn which conjunctions change word order in German and which don’t
There are different kinds of conjunctions that have different effects on the sentence.
The “normal” word order, as we expect it to be, is Subject Verb Object.
Coordinating conjunctions have no effect on word order: und, denn, sondern, aber, and oder.
Subordinating conjunctions do something much more confusing—they kick the first verb in the clause to the end of the clause. The most common
subordinating conjunctions are: während, bis, als, wenn, da, weil, ob, obwohl, and dass.
Ich kann ihn nicht leiden, weil er so ein egoistischer Idiot ist.
But if you use a subordinating conjunction, then the verb gets moved to the end of the clause:
Ich habe auch schon immer gedacht, dass er ein egoistischer Idiot ist.
Obwohl er ein egoistischer Idiot ist, sollten wir nett zu ihm sein.
In the famous essay “the Awful German Language,” Mark Twain has a good example of how ridiculous this rule can be:
“But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor’s
wife met,”
Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Samt und Seide gehüllten jetzt sehr ungenirt nach der neusten Mode gekleideten Resräthinbegegnet.
Remember, even if it seems difficult, that’s just German! Stick with it.
Modal Verbs
In German, the infinitive of the verb is usually easy to spot – almost every verb in the entire language ends in “-en.” (there are some likesammeln– to
collect, and segeln– to sail, which are a little different!)
Modal verbs are a very common kind of “helping verb,” and in German you’ll see them, in various forms, all of the time.
When you use a modal verb, the second verb in the sentence is always in the infinitive and comes at the end of the sentence.
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It’s not going to feel natural for you at first to put the infinite at the end of sentence! Just imagine picking it up, juggling it, and putting it down in the right
place.
Relative Clauses
In German, in every relative clause (Nebensatz), the verb comes at the end.
If there are two verbs in a relative clause, the verb that gets booted to the end of the sentence is always the first verb. That means the h
“ abe” in “habe….
geschlafen” or the “ist” in “ist… gegangen,” or the “muss” in “muss… lernen.” The other verb stays in its normal position. (past participle is the jargon but i
can understand you leaving that out!)
Das Geschenk, das ich meinem Vater gekauft habe, ist nicht mehr in meinem Auto!
Ich möchte nur Mitarbeiter in meinem Café haben, die richtig gut Latte Art machen können.
It’s still correct for you to put adverbs in another part of the sentence:
But don’t mess this up! You can even put the object at the beginning of the sentence and invert it to add emphasis on the object.
Seine Umzüge habe ich niemals gemocht – Er hat einfach zu viele Möbel!
Here are some examples of prepositional phrases at the beginning of the sentence that put the verb at the end:
Finally, when you’re putting together a long string of information in a sentence, all of the information should come in in the order Time Manner Place
(TMP).That means that adverbs describing when something happened should come first, followed by how adverbs, and finally whereadverbs.
Try looking at long German sentences that you find in newspapers or on German videos on FluentU so that you can get some real-life examples of how to
use adverbs correctly.
Here, the modal verb wollteis booted to the end of the sentence because weilis that kind of conjunction. Dass does the same thing, moving hat to
after mitgebracht.
Offenbar nicht ohne Grund muss man in Deutschland volljährig sein, um Ihre Konzerte zu besuchen.
In this sentence, Offenbar nicht ohne Grund takes the first position, meaning that muss comes before man. Sein, the infinitive of the verb for to be,
comes at the end of the clause.
Ich habe mich heute mit Interesse im Zug von Köln nach Hamburg mit einem Steel-Panther-Fan unterhalten
Time: heute
Manner: mit Interesse
Place: im Zug von Köln nach Hamburg
Als ich 1981 diese Band gründete, wollte ich nicht nur einen Sänger. Ich suchte auch jemanden, der die ganze Zeit genau das tut, was ich will.
Als, a subordinating conjunction, moves gründete to the end of the clause. In the relative clause,der die ganze Zeit genau das tut, the verb tut also
comes at the end of the clause.
Jetzt sind wir fertig! Wenn du noch dringend mehrGrammatik-Tipps brauchst, stöbere weiter im FluentU-Blog.
After learning the points above, you’ll start to recognize them more often in their natural environment, and it’s going to start feeling more natural for you to
follow them yourself.
In the meantime, you can start enjoying the same content that native speakers actually watch, right now. We’ve got everything from Volkswagen
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