“The Joinooooor”
( doesn’t like a full stop,
uses all subordinating conjunctions,
sees two sentences – connects them,
“The book was good. But could be one sentence.”, …)
Hallo ihr lieben,
and welcome to day 14 of the epic German learning calendar, the calendar with the freshest memes, straight from the gutter of the web, aka 4Chan.
And also the Advent Calendar with the trickiest, most intricate exercises.
Because today, the second half of the calendar really starts, and that’s the perfect moment to wreck our brains a little.
And we’ll do that by trying to:
Build Long German Sentences
Because if there’s one thing German is known for, then it’s der, die, das, the cases, compound nouns, verbs at the end, a thousand words for the same thing and… long sentences :).
Today, we’ll do a type of exercise that we’ve not done in a LONG time and try to build some of them, but before we jump in, let me say this:
Long sentences are NOT necessarily good German.
Learners who have reached a certain level (like B2) and start writing often have a tendency to try to make long sentences with all kinds of connecting words and commas. And it almost never works. Not only because they usually butcher the grammar, but also because they wouldn’t be good style even if they were correct. A comma just for the sake of not making a full stop is not good. In fact, you should always strive to make SHORT sentences. Keep it simple.
The long ones will happen naturally when what you’re trying to say is so complex that you NEED a long sentence with several connections. Don’t force it, just let it happen.
Cool. And with that out of the way, let’s get to the exercise.
Here’s what we’ll do:
I’ll give you a set of simple sentences that together form one more or less complex message. And your task is to combine the separate sentences into one.
Some of you may remember this format from other articles but let’s do an example.
Here’s the parts:
- Thomas hat Marias Geburtstag vergessen.
- Deshalb ist sie sauer.
- Sie sagt mir das.
And here’s the combination.
- Maria sagt mir, dass sie sauer ist, weil Thomas ihren Geburtstag vergessen hat.
As you can see, I am conveying the same information, the same relations, but in a more integrated manner.
Note that this is ONE possible solution, but of course there are more options. Especially for the ones that have more parts.
Today, we’ll do three of those, with moderate to more complex difficulty, so if you’re a complete beginner, this might be a bit too much, but give it a try anyway. If you get stuck, try to combine only two for a start.
We’ll collect solutions together in the comments, so just put yours there and I’ll give you a quick feedback them. That way, we can also collect different versions for the same set and see what’s better and why.
So… viel Spaß :)
***
Set 1)
- Maria war im Wald spazieren.
- Da hat sie ein Einhorn gesehen.
- Sie erzählt mir von dem Einhorn.
Set 2)
- Ich habe ein wichtiges Projekt auf Arbeit.
- Deshalb muss morgen früh aufstehen.
- Mein Mitbewohner weiß das.
- Trotzdem lädt er seine Freunde zum Football gucken ein.
Set 3)
- Thomas beschwert sich über den Barista.
- Thomas ist ein Stammgast bei diesem Starbucks.
- Der Barista hat Thomas’ Namen falsch auf den Becher geschrieben.
- Der Barista hat vor zwei Tagen angefangen.
***
Looking forward to your attempts :).
Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow.
wpDiscuz
