Hello everyone,
and welcome to some grammar. Huah!
Who’s wants to find out about Konjunktive 2? One? Two?
Well too bad, because today we’ll start the series about
German Word Order
This is one of the most fascinating and also most poorly explained grammar topics. Many textbooks and courses give you a bunch of bunch of rules, like Accusative before Dative or Time-Manner-Place or the infamous (and crappy) Tekamolo.
If you haven’t heard about that one, good for you, it’s nonsense.
Seriously, the thing with word order “rules” is that they’ll take you straight to Exception-City, and they also completely miss what’s really going on below the surface.
You see, German word order is NOT a result of rules.
Instead, it’s the result of an interplay of different forces and what you actually want to say. Sounds complex, but it’s actually really intuitive once you understand it. Particularly, this one fundamental truth about German and German verbs is an absolute game changer. The one that textbooks usually miss ;).
So yeah… in this series, we’ll look into how word order ACTUALLY works and when you’re done, you’ll be able to make sense of most structures you see. And you’ll also get a better understanding of how negation works, where modal particles are and why the verb goes to the end.
Today, we’ll start with a little look at what I mean by word order and how it’s different from sentence structure.
Then, we’ll see how free German word order is and how rules really fail at adequately explaining this.
Then, I’ll tell you the basics of what’s actually going on and if we have some time left (we will), I’ll tell you that one big game changing insight.
Sounds good?
Then jump in we shall.
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The article linked in Part 2 is the OLD version. It’ll not tie in perfectly. I’ll redo that soon.
didn’t get this, part 2 for this series is not there?
It is, but I redid part 1 a few months ago pretty much completely. So you read the new version of part 1 but the other two episodes are still the old versions.
Could you please provide the link for this series? There are 3 parts
?
They’re linked under this article.
I’m very glad to see that this article has been updated to include the concept of increasing news value, as I suggested a few months ago. Cheers!
Yeah, it really was time to clean this up. The majority of the news value stuff will be in part 2 and 3, but I haven’t gotten around to editing those yet.
A really good revamp.
Thank you
This relates meaning to words, rather than regulation alone.
I’ll weight in some clarification about the adjective-noun order in Italian :D
Oggi ho bevuto un caffè caldo e delizioso
Oggi ho bevuto un delizioso caffè caldo
Oggi ho bevuto un caldo e delizioso caffè
All three are about “drinking a hot and delicious coffee today” but they carry a different “emotional” value”. In general, adjectives follows the nouns when they express an objective truth or characteristic, while they express a personal or emotional evaluation when they precede the noun.
Another example would be “un vecchio amico” vs “un amico vecchio”. The first is a friend and the friendship is old and dear, while the second is a friend who just happens to be old.
An exception are the possessive and demonstrative pronouns as they always precede the noun
Wow! 170 comments below. Sorry to add one more. I did try to think through it but…
Ist zu Hause alles in Ordnung?
My English-speaking brain would love to say: Ist alles zu Hause in Ordnung? or better yet: “Ist alles in Ordnung zu Hause” But from what DeepL (sigh) is telling me, That is a very unpopular word order. But I can’t think of why that would be.
For me, this doesn’t past the 3 factor test or the TMPL or whatever ‘rules’. The question is about what is happening AT HOME. Thus…move it toward the end.
Is this another DeepL thing or does zu Hause really need to be wo far forward in the sentence?
Most of the comments are about the older version of the article. I have put a separator comment in there :).
About your question:
Many sentences won’t pass that because it’s not a rule or “thing”. It’s just statistically more common than other orders.
You just fell into a trap. The sentence does NOT use the verb “happen” but “to be okay”. You CANNOT paraphrase something, the order is not based on semantics alone but the EXACT verb.
And the most important thing for this phrase is “who/what?” , not “where”.
So the answer to “who/what” (the subject) is naturally more on the right than place here.
You can also think of “alles in Ordnung” as a block, if you want.
– to be —> be what? : to be okay
– who/what? —> alles
“Ist alles in Ordnung zu Hause”
This is how someone might say it on a phone call. It’s this new fashion of externalizing prepositional objects and treating them as an afterthought or coda.
Oh, by the way… the fact that it’s “everything okay at home” in English is a strong indication that it’ll be reversed in German, because in English the verb sits left, while in German it sits right. The order of elements relative to the verb is the same, just that the verbs are on different sides.
Ausgezeichnet! So spreche ich auf English. Meine ganze Sprache und mein Sätzbau sind auf ‘afterthought’ gebaut. Frag meine Studenten! :)
Sentences with negation prove especially difficult for many foreign learners!
While the general meaning might seem clear, its meaning could also be misunderstood, even if the misunderstanding might seem like mere hairsplitting (Wortklauberei, Haarspalterei).
For instance:
Ich kann morgen nicht kommen. = I’m not able to make it tomorrow.
Ich kann nicht morgen kommen. = I can’t make it tomorrow, […however, perhaps on a different day].
Sentence 1 is more or less absolute, whereas sentence 2 leaves the door open:-)
Both sentences are entirely correct, yet the meaning is not the same and could easily cause confusion if the speaker thinks he’s saying something which is understood differently by the German interlocutor.
How might one say — I can’t come in the mornings …
will you do a quiz for this topic?
For this lesson, not really. I did a thorough recap at the end, so there’d not be much to ask beyond yet another recap. And I think it’s a bit “too early” in the journey to quiz effectively. Maybe after part 2.
Doing an actual exercise for this is hard, because of all the various options of word order, but I’m playing around with ChatGPT atm to see if that’s an option.
New to this learning community – thank you so much to everyone who gave extra to help others join!
Yourdailygerman blog has been such a huge help for me. The way in which topics are explained. I come from a country where it’s not that easy to earn a lot. I reached to Emanuel, explaining my situation and my desire to learn German. I was extremely happy to hear that I was able to attain a membership for the whole year. He explained that this was possible only through the contribution of some other members. I want to express my gratitude to all who of those who went out of their way to help an other person. I am proud to be a part of this community. Thank you !
Willkommen!!
In the “Relevance to Verb” section I found only English examples , and the explanation that the more relevant the element, the closer it is to the verb left me somewhat lost. Does it mean closer to the right as is the case with the two other forces? Or it means closer to the verb wherever it be?
We’ll look into this way more in part 2, no worries!
I kind of had to stick with English examples here because using German ones requires understanding “head-final” AND a small but super substantial rethink of how a sentence looks. None of this would work without examples, so it would have not been a quick overview anymore :).
In a nutshell, the more relevant for a verb, the closer to it (unless it gets pulled elsewhere by a stronger force).
And the key is that the real position of the verb in German is at the end. Think of the end as the home of the verb and position 2 is just “work”.
So the more relevant, the further right in German and the further left in English.
The perfect way to see this dynamic are infinitive phrasings as you’d put them on your todo-list
– go to yoga with Maria (neutral)
– go with Maria to yoga (WEIRD)
– mit Maria zum Yoga gehen (neutral)
– zum Yoga mit Maria gehen (highly emphasized on MARIA)
– gehen zum yoga mit Maria (no German would EVER write it that way onto their to do list)
Our word order is far more flexible than English!
Ich kann ihm helfen. S + Aux.+ O + MVb.
IHM kann ich helfen.
HELFEN kann ich ihm.
The second sentence order might sound odd in English, possibly almost like “Yiddlish” HIM I can help.
And of course the third sentence is impossible in English.
“Him I can help” sounds perfectly fine in (at least my variant of) English, but it would tend to indicate that there’s at least one other person that I *can’t* help. The emphasis can either be placed on the “Him” (as a contrast to others, the distinction possibly being a result of reasons other than those requiring help), or on “can” (the condition needing attention is, unlike some of the others, amenable to my ministrations).
How about “Help him, I can, but do it for him – that’s out of bounds.”?
Generally, the tension-emphasis dynamic is the same in German and English. The core difference is how the neutral order looks, which in many aspects is reversed German.
It’s a little theatrical sounding, or maybe even vaguely parental or patronising, but still sounds fine to my ears. Without the “but…” section at the end, however, it’s pretty much perfect Yoda-speak.
To me this word order sounds more than a little theatrical – it sounds very shakespearean to me. As for “Him I can help” my initial reaction reaction was it just sounds plain wrong but I guess if you but i guess if you have a pause / emphasise the him then i can see it being ok with certain intonation…
My feelings exactly!
It’s always a question as to how natural-sounding said phrase is to native speakers of that language.
I’m sure you know this, but it’s in principle the exact same dynamic as in German. We’re moving elements around into such an unusual position that there is so much tension that we MUST have a reason for it. This “but” provides the reason and validates the tension, but without it, the hyper focus makes no sense and hence sounds wrong.
Yeah, fair enough.
I do tend to think that (vocal) emphasis/stress has absorbed so much (well, pretty much *all*) of the flexibility lost through the dissolution of the case system in English that these sort of subtleties in order are just remnants/revenants now. That is, such unusually structured sentences actually mark themselves through that “unusualness” to such an extent that they’re reserved for the sort of artificial situations mentioned above (theatre, poetry, etc…), and just provoke incredulity outside of those contexts.
((Aah, *context*: now there’s a reminder. A comment regarding TeKaMoLo, German speakers with L-Plates, and context is gently marinating as I type. Well, hopefully it’s marination that’s taking place, and not putrefaction…))
“German speakers with L-Plates” this is going over my head :).
Ah, sorry, that’s probably not quite the universal requirement that I imagined! When you’re learning to drive in some countries you have to attach an “L” sign (“L-plate”) to the front and rear of the vehicle.
Hey, maybe us language-learning folk should wear some kind of “A(nfanger)-plate” when trying to navigate the German-speaking world auf Deutsch. (As if a sentence or two isn’t enough to make it bleedingly obvious!).
As for the promised TeKaMoLo rant: I started writing it but started feeling like I’d already produced something similar. An anything-but-straightforward search finally revealed a longish comment I’d made after this quiz on German word order from early last year, which covers most of the same ground as I was going to cover here. (The “context” thing is bubbling away, so I’ll dwell on that for a while and see if anything halfway interesting emerges.)
For anyone curious, here’s the direct link to the comment:
https://yourdailygerman.com/practice-german-word-order-episode-1/#comment-76095
I took that from dev-tools comments ID. I think I should add a comment link in each comment maybe :D. So people can actually directly link to them.
That’d be a cool addition, I think. The other thing that would be handy is a link to “Your comments”, maybe in the “Members” drop-down. I’m sure you mentioned one way for users to get to a listing of all their comments not so long ago, but I foolishly neglected to bookmark either the comment or the link, und ich konnte es nicht aufspüren.
All right, the link is up (but might be browser cached out of your view, so wait till that clears :).
To see your comments, you can either use the little icon next to/under the comment count at the top of the comment thread or my really really basic ugly archive under https://yourdailygerman.com/my-comments/.
I don’t have time to work on that at the moment, though maybe I should “vibe code” it, lol.
English tends to register shades of meaning in tone of voice, whereas we in German will apply modal particles, e.g. doch, mal, eben, schon, etwa, zwar, auch and so on:-)
For instance,
He’ll be here this evening, you think? –
SURE he will!! (voice rising slightly)
vs.
Er kommt heute abend, oder? – Doch, er kommt schon. (No change in pitch whatsoever, yet emphatic)
That doesn’t quite work in my book. “I can” makes it sound kind of Yoda-y. You could say something like this:
Or if you put a good pause before the second part, you could get away with something like this:
I have struggled with this topic and your approach is making sense of it. Keep it coming.
Oh this is so interesting! Can’t wait for part two!
Awesome way to look at it, I didn’t learn it Tamaleko-like (I don’t even remember the name), I had an awesome course and a good site, but both of them never actually explained you could move some things in a sentence and make it work if you know how to do it, that’s why I’m excited about this sentence Ich gebe mein Bier einem Einhorn – I never knew it was possible.
Also I’m Brazilian and I can’t speak for Italian, but in both Portuguese and Spanish, we can use some adjectives before the nouns and give them emphasis. In Brazilian Portuguese, it’s actually very common to mix the order, but be careful, some adjectives in Portuguese change its deep meaning depending on its position on a sentence:
Um café quente e delicioso
Um delicioso, quente café (stress on the adjectives)
Um delicioso café quente (although both delicioso and quente are its adjectives, quente works like it’s part of the noun)
Now: um homem bom/um bom homem can mean two different things all by itself .
Oh wow, I didn’t know this was possible! Now I’m wondering how it is in Italian and if they maybe “allow” it. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t work in French at all.
Come one though… you have the clear up homen bom vs bom homen now :)
In Italian it works exactly the same way as Nhyphk explains. Although not all combinations work…
For example, “Un caffè caldo e delizioso” is the standard way, vs “Un caldo e delizioso caffè” puts emphasis on the adjectives, and highlights the feeling one gets when drinking the coffe.
As for the difference in meaning, I suspect is the same in Portuguese as it is in Italian; in Italian a typical example is the difference between “un uomo povero” (a man who is not rich) vs “un pover’uomo” (a man who might be down on his luck).
Similarly, “un uomo buono” talks about the man’s character, in that he is calm, rarely gets angry, and has a tendency to forgiveness. “un buon uomo” is honest and trustworthy.
Usually, when the adjective has a “literal” meaning, it goes behind the name; when the meaning is more “abstract” or “figurative” it goes in front.
By the way, when you wrote:
“You can’t say “un caldo, delicioso cafe“ in Italien”
you are completely correct, but not because it’s not a “valid” pattern, but because it’s in Spanish ;)
And people complain that German is complex :).
I never heard about this in Italian and it’s VERY interesting to learn that it has such a big impact on meaning.
Also interesting to see that there’s a “literal” vs “abstract” trend going on because that’s also often a sort of distinguishing line in German.
Yes, yes!!
German has numerous verbs which, depending on the syllable stress, can have either a concrete or an abstract meaning (uebertragener Sinn), for example
durchschauen (to see through someone’s intentions, for instance) vs. durchschauen (literally, to see through someTHING, e.g. an [open] window, etc.
Great article, love it
I think something got deleted after you showed off your chic French. In the quote below, I think you meant to switch back to head-final? I find the paragraph very confusing.
(And why head-final and not head-last?)
“The main thing, the head, comes first and the specifics come after.
Adjectives for nouns in German and English are one example.
Another one in German is the compound nouns.”
Feel free to delete this if I’m off base or you fix it.
I actually just noticed that and changed that bit. I didn’t really edit that last section before posting, I just skimmed it and it seemed okay, but yeah… that was a huge contextual jump.
Hello,
Here are a couple typos:
“they also completely misses” (they also completely miss)
“German sentence is the result an interplay” (German sentence is the result of an interplay)
“and example for head-first would be” (an example for head-first would be)
Thanks, I wish I’d read this when I started learning German and spent lots of time doing hundreds of Takemolo exercises :)
Can’t wait to see how this interplay actually works!!
Bis bald!
I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the 3 forces without much detail or any examples, but I’ll wait for the revision of Part 2!
I echo the feeling of being a bit lost re the “three forces”. It’s a very interesting article and I’m looking forward to part 2 also! I know Emanuel already extensively revised this, so I’m loathe to suggest further revisions, but… it would be good to have a heads up as to what those 3 forces are, beyond what you’re calling them. As it stands, the reader is scrolling back to check that they’ve not missed anything, since they get subsequently referenced.. I’m nodding along like “yep, yep, makes sense —wait, what were those forces again?” It’s a bit jarring.
Or maybe it just needs a sentence to say, as you introduce them, that you’ll explain these in detail in part 2 – all the reader needs to know now is that there are these three and functionally they have this effect on word order tension.
You have a point.
I have revised the whole section and added a quick sneak peek example for each force.
https://yourdailygerman.com/german-word-order/#word-order-three-forces
We will do this in detail in part 2, but it doesn’t hurt to give a quick example here too.
Amazing! Thanks for responding to the feedback :)
Good point!
I have revised that section and now the three forces have their own headline and I’m giving a quick example for each of them in action.
https://yourdailygerman.com/german-word-order/#word-order-three-forces
This is actually much better now in terms of structure of the overall article. Thanks for the feedback!
Ich bin mir sicher dass manche Leute schreien “nur neue Kontent!” aber für mich ist das nicht nötig. Es freut mich dass du älteren Artikeln erneuet. Ich lese alles hier.
Übrigens, ich finde dass du (und deine Reply) sehr sehr ruhig und enspannt wenn jemand im Kommentar die Nachricht “you are full of shit” angefangen.
A tip of my hat to you sir – ein besserer Man als ich stimmt.
Das kommt zum Glück echt selten vor und ich will nicht so einen Internet-Streit in meiner Comment-Section haben. Das mache ich lieber auf Reddit :D.
It’s funny, as I was reading this, I was thinking „Wow he didn’t even mention the „Head-Final“ double entendre“ – but alas in the final moments of the rewrite… the last beer does its magic…
Ich mag die neue Layout, Schriftart, Farbe-scheme usw. Es sieht an meinem iPad echt gut aus. Die Schriftart geht hier gut – Geschäft mit/zu Vergnügen. Es freut mich dass deine Website immer besser werden.