Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German intensive summer boot camp.
Yeah, I know. You didn’t want this. You just wanted to relax, read a bit about a word, some examples, some history, some dumb jokes. But nope. Today it’s your turn.
So put on your sweatpants and get ready for a hefty work out about
Time Words
Or to be a little more specific
bevor or vor and other tricky words
Mixing up vor and bevor and also davor is a really common mistake; for beginners as well as advanced learners. And it’s the same story for nach, danach and nachdem.
Today, we’ll train exactly that… when to use which.
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Also, I wasn’t sure if I understand, in your example: ‘Bevor Thomas gekommen ist, war die Party echt cool.’
Why does the second clause begin with ‘war die Party’ instead of ‘die Party war’? Is it because the entire first clause (a Nebensatz because of ‘bevor’, no?) is considered one unit / a single first word, so then as always the second word has to be a verb, in this case ‘war’?
Sorry, I realize that’s probably complicated. If you have a lesson on this, I’d love to take a look, I’m sure you explain it very well there :)
Thank you Emanuel!
You pretty much nailed it. The first element can be whatever length, as long as it is one element. That means it answers ONE question from within the main sentence.
“heute” and “bevor Thomas gekommen ist” both answer “when?”, for example.
Understanding this stuff is really helpful actually, and I have an article about it:
https://yourdailygerman.com/german-sentence-structure/
It does need a do-over but the info is what you’re looking for I think.
Do you have a page where you explain how to formulate -ing forms (present participle), like in your example, ““I was at the bar after work, having a drink.” “Ich war nach der Arbeit in der Bar, was trinken.” I haven’t learned how to formulate the ‘was trinken’ structures.
I do have an article about participle constructions in particular, but it’s not a round-up of the different options.
https://yourdailygerman.com/german-participle-constructions/
Sentences like the example you mentioned are a special group (gehen, sein, kommen) and I have an article about them too:
https://yourdailygerman.com/einkaufen-gehen-why-no-zu/
I am very impressed by your format because (a) you keep it simple for learners and (b) the examples force the learners to learn the distinctions. Very happy that a friend pointed me to your site.
Thanks, much appreciated!
Thank you so MUCH without this exercises all the other knowledge would be almost useless!! TYSMMMM
Doing better with round 2, but I now have a question on the position of dusche.in 30 it’s at the end of sentence but in 29 it comes after Abendessen. Your (endless) patience is appreciated
I just discovered this exercise series and it’s terrific, one question : in terms of sentence structure (word order), can there be more than one correct answer?For example in #10, Thomas trinkt immer einen Kaffee vor der Arbeit vs. Vor der Arbeit trinkt Thomas immer einen Kaffee.
Absolutely!
“vor der Arbeit” is a time box and that can stand anywhere any other time box can stand. So “vor der Arbeit” can go anywhere “heute” could go.
It’s impossible to account for these variants in an exercise like this, because there are sometimes like 4 options.
I did not do as well as I anticipated. My problem is that I get too ahead of myself and go through the quiz too quickly. This is from the crappy way tests were administered when I was in school (60 years ago). When one was finished with his test, he could leave for the day. I was tired of being the last one in class. (LOL) I did not pay attention to the verb tense in your examples, and I confused nachher and danach, vorher and davor. After all of these years, I have to train myself to slow down. I will be taking the B2 exam in October and I don’t want to make dumb mistakes because I am rushing.
That’s a great takeaway :). Eile mit Weile, as we say in German.
Danke schon für den Unterricht. Es war sehr hilfreich! Seine Erklärung war besonders klar und die Beispiele waren sehr hilfreich.
Hallo Emanuel, sehr hilfreich; als entsprechende Adverbien auf Englisch hätte ich auch ‘beforehand’ und ‘afterwards’ genannt/einbezogen. LG, Julian
Stimmt, aber für welche deutschen Wörter?
(kleiner Test für dich :)
Oddly enough, bevor becomes… ‘eb’ in Pa Dutch. For whatever reason.
Apparently it’s a shortening of ‘ehebevor,’ so an old dialectal compound.
Still ver (or var in some places, the difference is vowel length as ‘ver’ sounds like it were ‘fa’) before nouns though, except in de form which is devor. (Fer from für does a similar thing where it becomes defor.)
Ver un devor > vor und davor
Fer un defor > für und dafür.
I’m not sure devor is used the same way as davor is in German though, couldn’t find any use of it that way, though I did for vorhaer and zuvor (the aer is like the vowel in English ‘cat’ followed by the -er vowel if German)
Actually, does Pa Dutch roll the “r” or is it the American English “r”?
It’s all the above, lol. Main thing is it’s never uvular.
Basically there’s two axes to think about, one is non-sectarian (like me and most Pa Dutch but not most dialect speakers) vs sectarian (Amish, Menonites, Dunkards, etc. Anabaptist groups who are most the speakers).
The second is location, midwestern dialects vs ones in Pennsylvania proper.
Native speakers are more likely to have a rolled R, but L2 and “L1.5” if you will may have a mix.
Midwestern speakers like in Indiana or Ohio tend to be more conservative and have rolled R’s in most positions before vowels but may vary in word initial clusters.
Eastern speakers like in Pennsylvania tend to but may not necessarily have an American type R word initially but a rolled R between vowels like in root vs Mariye.
Sectarian speakers in eastern areas in particular tend to have an American R in all positions and since they’re some of the most common speakers progressive enough to allow their voices be recorded, they’re fairly well studied and available to be heard.
Sectarians like the Amish actually speak less conservatedly than one might expect for their otherwise conservative nature.
I myself use a rolled R cept after sch, as I can’t otherwise pronounce that cluster.
“I myself use a rolled R cept after sch, as I can’t otherwise pronounce that cluster.”
Wow, that’s interesting, since English does have that combination of sounds in words like shrine or shrewd. Do you pronounce these with a rolled “r” as well?
Not surprised about it never being uvular. I think that particular sound was never part of the English inventory.
Also, your knowledge about this is impressive! Have you studied Pa dutch in some way?
Not myself no, it’s exactly those shr clusters that I can’t get my tongue to do a rolled R, but I do roll R’s everywhere else in Pa Dutch, though in English my R is kinda weird.
Uvular R began spreading in German about the like 18th~19th century, Pa Dutch having left the Pfalz, Switzerland, and Alsace in the late 17th/early 18th century, when they didn’t have this uvular R, ended up never getting it by being isolated in North America.
Modern Palatine German tends to have a uvular R and it’s actually a big change in the overall sound of the dialect. You hear Palatine and you hear Pa Dutch and even without overt English influence they both just sound German vs American respectively. Bit like American English vs British.
Yep! I have been studying Pa Dutch for about 4 years now, about a year less than Standard German (though I feel I’m better at Pa Dutch compared to Standard German). Not a native speaker sadly, my grandmother was the last to have that pleasure in my family.
I’m English and I teach German adults English. My pupils struggle with “two years ago” – they want to say “for two years”. You didn’t mention this use when dealing with “vor”.
Vor and nach both decline the noun after (Dative). Davor/vorher/danach can all be translated into before/after THAT. That helps me. Thanks for your Erklärung!
Happy it helps :)
I love these translations exercises where one does not only practice the subject in discussion (in this case “Time words”) but also, since the sentences are so varied and with some degree of complexity, all the other things we’ve learned so far. It feels much more rewarding not only the time word to guess as well as the whole translation — with all that implies.
These were great. I’ll be returning to them many times to practice!
Awesome, I’m happy to hear that!
Vielen Dank Emanuel. Sehr schöne Übungen! Wort Ordnung ist mein Problem!
Was ist denn dein Problem genau mit dem Wort “Ordnung”?
Gib mir ein bisschen Details und ich versuche zu helfen.
ZB: N. 8. Mein Antwort: Der Film war schrecklich, aber ich habe das vorher gewusst. Und
N. 19. Moi: Nach dem Training trinkt Maria immer einen Smoothie.
HILFE! HILFE!! Ich bin ins Wasser und schwimmen kann ich nicht!
Danke für die Rettung!
Ohhhh… ich hatte verstanden, dass du ein Problem mit dem WORT “Ordnung” hast :D.
Wie hättest du diese beiden Beispiele geordnet?
Also, die sind OKAY? Die Lösungen sind ein bisschen anders.
Ja, die sind okay. Es gibt oft mehr als eine Möglichkeit, und ich kann nicht immer alle aufschreiben, deshalb wähle ich eine aus.
Hi,
Vielen Dank für tolle Übungen mit diesen Zeitwörten. Meine Frage ist ,, wo man das verb mit ,,before oder nachdem ” setzt?
“bevor” und “nachdem” machen einen Nebensatz, also die gleiche Struktur wie bei “dass” oder “weil”.
Hilft das?
chicken sandwich
With salad.
Thanks so much for the wonderful post and exercises!
Gerne :)
The excercises were super useful, after doing some of them, it was very intuitive the reasoning. Thank you!!!!
That’s awesome!! I’m glad to hear that :)
Great mental work out. I‘ll try to comback to this once I reached B1 level. Thanks.