Hello everyone,
and welcome to the third part of our mini series on
German Word Order
and if you haven’t read part 1 and part 2 yet, you really should do that because today’s post won’t make much sense without it. So here they are:
And no, there will be no recap. You don’t like beers to a get a recap either, right?
Anyway, so last time was all about head final and the notion of important stuff coming very late. But it turned out that this couldn’t quite explain everything. Because it’s actually only half of the the truth. Today, we’ll look at the other half. So… are you ready to jump in once more, even if the water looks a little nerdy?
Awesome, let’s get started.
***
The two key things about word order we have learned so far are as follows.
The first half, the Yin of word order, was this:
The more interesting or defining something is the later it comes.
I got the second half, the Yang, on my notes right here and I’m gonna read it to you know. Behold:
The less interesting, less defining something is, the earlier it comes.
I know what you’re thinking now.
You’re like “This is really really really really dumb.” And you’re right. It does sound kind of stupid. I mean… it’s the exact same idea as the first sentence. Just seen from the other side. Of course the less interesting stuff has to come early when the more interesting stuff comes late.
Not everything can come late, right?
But it’s really helpful to actually spell it out that way. This “unicorn wisdom reversed”, as we’ll call it, puts focus on the early stuff and that’s exactly what we need. So let’s keep an open and mind and give it a chance.
Elements that must come early
Before we get all abstract again it’s probably a good a idea to see “unicron wisdom reversed” do some real, honest work. Like… making some real position decisions that we can understand without having to bend our mind. So we’ll start of with a look at elements that MUST come early.
Like for example certain reflexive pronouns. Your favorite kind ;).
- Ich habe [mich] gestern wie immer für Schwarzbier entschieden.
- As always, I decided to go/opted for dark beer yesterday.
German needs the mich in this sentence and it must be where it is.
- Ich habe mich gestern [
mich ]wie immer [mich]für Schwarzbier [MICH]entschieden.
(the last position is ultra turbo hyper wrong because the thing I decide for or against is just so strongly connected to the verb itself)
All of these position create a HUGE amount of tension, a lot of emphasis on mich. The problem is… emphasis is for content but the word has none. Just imagine someone walks up to and goes like “I have something really cool in my hands” and then … there’s nothing. And the person is like “Isn’t that cool?”. That would be weird and it’s kind of like that here. The mich has NO substance.
I mean… I can’t “decide someone else”, after all. It doesn’t add any information to the verb. It’s completely boring and the only reason it’s even there is… grammar. Having it come later implies that is has some interesting message, but it doesn’t. It’s pure function.And that’s why it has to come as early as possible.
Now, not all self references are completely empty meaning-wise.
- Ich habe mich gestern im Fernsehen gesehen.
- I saw myself on TV yesterday
Thomas could also have seen someone else on TV. So here, the self reference does make a difference for the message. And that’s why other positions are possible.
- Ich habe [mich] gestern [mich] im Fernsehen [mich] gesehen.
The first slot is clearly the most natural one. The others do create a strong emphasis. But this mich can handle it because it has substance. It makes a difference to the message. And that’s why having it later doesn’t sound wrong.
Now, these self references that are only there for the structure are not the only examples for elements that are quite empty. Another one is this weather-es.
- It is cloudy today.
- Es ist heute wolkig.
What is this es? What does it stand for? Truth is, doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a generic subject we put in there because of grammar. So from a message point of view it is completely uninteresting. And that has consequences for where it can be put in a sentence.
- Letzten Freitag hat [ es ] in Berlin [
es]zum ersten mal seit 6 Wochen[es]nicht den ganzen Tag[es] geregnet. - Last Friday, it wasn’t raining all day for the first time in 6 weeks.
Only the first slot works. All the others create special emphasis and es has no substance to live up to that attention.
All right.
So, these were some examples where unicorn wisdom reversed clearly calls the shots. But it’s more powerful than that. For instance it can help us with the subject.
The Subject – Often Early, but not always
One of the very consistent trend of German is that the subject usually comes very early
- Despite Maria’s protest, Thomas bought 4 different kinds of stinky cheese at the market yesterday.
- Gestern hat [Thomas] auf dem Markt [Thomas] trotz Marias Protest [Thomas] vier verschiedene Sorten Stinkekäse
[THOMAS]gekauft.
The first slot is the default, the most natural position. The others are not wrong. But the tension and the resulting emphasis is HUGE. Like…
- It was THOMAS, ‘T’ ‘H’ ‘O’ ‘M’ ‘A’ ‘S’, who bought 4 different kinds of smelly cheese despite… and so on and so on.
And the last slot it sounds even wrong.
It’s like that for most sentences. The subject comes super early. Combined with “unicorn wisdom reversed” that would mean that the subject is the least or at least one of the least defining elements.
Well… it actually is.
Now you’re probably all like “WHAAAAT?”. And I understand. Of course it’s interesting for us to know who does something. But last time, we’ve learned that the verb itself is the head of a sentence. It’s the most important part. And so for word order we have to judge everything looking from the perspective of the verb. How defining is an element for THE ACTIVITY. How much does a certain activity change if the subject changes. And the answer for many activities is …not very much. The who is not defining for the activity. Like… imagine a step by step video tutorial about how to make an onion tart. We’d want to see the hands doing stuff, not the face narrating. We can define activities without a subject just fine… just think of receipes
- die Zwiebeln in kleine Ringe schneiden
- cut the onions into small rings
- die Butter in der Pfanne langsam zergehen lassen
- let butter slowly melt in the pan
Or calendars….
- 28.1.: nach der Arbeit mit Maria zum Trainieren in den Park
(going to the park with Maria for a work out after word) - 30.1.: bei Maria für die Sache bei der Party entschuldigen
(apologize to Maria for what happened at the party) - Februar: einen neuen Trainingspartner für Donnerstags suchen
(find a new work out buddy for Thursdays)
Most activities can be described and defined just fine without mentioning the subject. And for these activities the subject will come very early, just like unicorn wisdom reverse predicts.
- Am 28.1. ist Thomas nach der Arbeit mit Maria zum ….
- Am 30.1. hat sich Thomas (sich) bei Maria für die Sache bei …..
- Im Februar will (sich) Thomas (sich) einen neuen Trainingspartner ….
Now, that doesn’t apply to all subjects. There are some verbs for which the who is very defining. In fact, there is a whole construction in which the subject comes rather late. The passive voice.
In passive the direct object of the verb, which is often the most defining element, gets turned into the subject.
- On Sunday, someone saw wolves near the village for the first time in 30 years.
- On Sunday, wolves were seen near the village for the first time in 30 years.
The first sentence is active, the second is passive. The wolves changed their grammatical role. But they didn’t change their role in relation to the verb. In both sentences they are what’s being seen, the most defining element for the verb to see. And the who, the person who saw them, is missing entirely in the second sentence. No problem, because it’s not that defining anyway. Now let’s see what happens in German.
- Am Sonntag hat jemand in der Nähe des Dorfes zum ersten Mal seit 30 Jahren Wölfe gesehen.
- On Sunday, someone saw wolves for the first time in 30 years near the village.
- Am Sonntag wurden in der Nähe des Dorfes zum ersten Mal seit 30 Jahren Wölfe gesehen.
- On Sunday, wolves were seen near the village for the first time in 30 years.
These sentences are the most natural orders and they have their subject at completely different positions. And while I can move around jemand without creating too much tension, the wolves shouldn’t be moved. Because they are most defining for the verb while the who doesn’t matter all that much.
All right. So now we know why the subject often comes very early. The key thing is to realize that it’s not defining for the verb and then unicorn wisdom reversed does the rest.
All right. So this was the subject.
Another group of words that often comes early are personal pronouns.
Pronouns – Mostly Early
Let’s start with an example:
- Ich habe gestern nach der Arbeit auf dem Markt ein neues Shirt gekauft.
- Wie findetst du mein neues Shirt? Ich habe es gestern nach der Arbeit auf dem Markt ….
- I bought a new shirt yesterday at the market after work.
- How do you like my new shirt? I bought it yesterday ….
In the first version, the shirt is at the end right next to the verb. That makes sense because for the verb to buy the thing being bought is very defining. In the second version however, the item bought is referred to by es. And this es comes very early. The question is: why.
And the answer is… because it’s boring. We know the shirt already. It has been established. So in this very sentence it is the least interesting bit. And that’s why it comes so early. Having it later would be really odd. Like… imagine I walk up to you and say
- How do you like my new shirt? I bought IT, ‘I’ to the ‘T’ yesterday at the market ….
You’d would be like “Why the heck is he putting that weird emphasis on it? What is he trying to tell me?”. Moving es further to the rear suggests that it is an interesting piece of news. But it isn’t. And that’s not limited to es.It goes for many pronouns. Their natural position is early because we already know the thing they refer to. It’s an established part of the conversation and so it’s not that interesting. At least it’s less interesting than the stuff we don’t know yet.
And that brings us to a very intuitive way of seeing German sentences.
A German Sentence as a Movie Scene
A German sentence kind of works like a movie scene. There’s a set up and then there’s a pay off. We see our protagonists, there’s a scenery with stuff we might know and then the scene unfold and we learn something new. Like… the manager walks into the office in the morning and the first thing her secretary tells her about the emergency meeting
- Die Managerin kommt morgens ins Büro. Direkt als erstes erzählt ihr ihre Sekretärin von dem Notfallmeeting.
Look at the second sentence. The pronoun ihr comes even before the subject (the secretary) because the secretary hasn’t been mentioned yet. But the main news is the emergency meeting and that is … at the end. The sentence gets set up and then comes the pay off, the new information. And as simple as this sounds, this is actually a blueprint for most German sentences. Here’s a little story.
- Thomas hat sich gestern ein Hörbuch bestellt.
Am Samstag hat er es beim Aufräumen gehört.
Danach hat er es Maria gegeben. Sie hatte es sich aber schon aus dem Internet heruntergeladen… illegal natürlich. Deshalb war sie sehr erschrocken als sie einen Brief der Polizei in ihrem Briefkasten fand. Sie hat das ihrem Anwalt erzählt…. - Thomas ordered an audio book yesterday.
On Saturday, he listened to it while cleaning.
After that he gave it to Maria. But she had already downloaded it from the web… illegally of course. That’s why she was quite shocked to find a letter from the police in her mail box. She told her lawyer about that….
Not the most interesting read but can you see how in each sentence the stuff we know comes first setting the stage for the new, interesting bit we learn in the second half. It’s a bit like domino, too, actually.
That simple notion of “first set up- then pay off”, in all it’s simplicity, works surprisingly well to explain why a a sentence is the way it is.
Let’s just look at a few examples with that idea in mind…. some of which we’ve already seen in previous posts because I’m too lazy to think of new on… I mean, because for pedagogical reasons… or something.
- Ich habe gestern im Supermarkt ein Brot gekauft.
- Ich habe das Brot gestern im Supermarkt gekauft.
Why is das Brot earlier than ein Brot? Well, by saying das we’re implying that the bread is already part of a broader scenery. The audience knows what bread. And that’s why it’s natural spot is in the front. It is setting, not news. Ein Brot on the other hand could be news. We’d say that if no bread was established before.
Same here
- Ich habe meiner Freundin eine Waage gekauft.
(I bought a scale for my girlfriend). - Ich habe die Waage einem Freund gegeben.
(I gave the scale to a friend)
In the first sentence, the scale is the news. In the second, the scale is part of the scenery already and the news is what happens with it.
And the example with the wolves? Well, the wolves are the grammatical subject. But they’re not really the protagonist. They are the news. They are the main thing we learn after all the scenery has been set up. So the scene-analogy also holds for these sentences.
- Ich habe [meiner Freundin] gestern nach der Arbeit [meiner Freundin] einen Apfel gegeben.
- I gave my girlfriend an apple after work yesterday.
Damn, these examples are starting to get boring. I’m sorry. But anyway, this one is actually an example for one of the questions we had last time. The question was why for a transfer-verb like geben the receiver (here: my girlfriend) often comes quite early even though it’s quite defining for the verb AND it isn’t a personal pronoun either.
Well, the easiest way to make sense of it is to think of the receiver as a protagonist. And protagonists come early. The receiver is usually part of the set up, not of the pay off. And that makes sense because…. my girlfriend is not really news. Maybe she wasn’t part of the conversation until this point BUT…. she is definitely part of what we could call “my broader scenery”. So when I’m go on stage, she’s kind of established too because she is part of my world. And in fact, that isn’t limited to people. My friend, his mother, her flat, your bike... everything that has some relation to the subject of a sentence is to some extend always part of the scenery. At least more than a friend, a mother, a flat or a bike. So his bike is more likely to come early than a bike.
All right.
Now, so far we’ve looked at the default order.But the whole scene-idea also helps with some crazier orders. So let’s look at two of those.
- CEO 1 : “Was war heute morgen los? Ich habe fast 100 verpasste Anrufe aus dem Büro.”
CEO 2: “Mich hat heute keiner angerufen. - CEO 1: “What was going this morning? I have almost 100 missed calls from the office.”
CEO 2: “Well, I wasn’t called AT ALL.
This is definitely special. The subject is late and the direct object is in first position. That creates a strong stress on both, keiner and mich. But it makes perfect sense that way. Why? Because keiner is the actual news in this sentence. That’s the message, the punch line. Mich on the other hand is just picking up the mantle of who is being called, and that was already part of the conversation.
- “Wie läuft’s mit deiner Masterarbeit? Kommst du voran?”
“Geht so. Richtig angefangen hab’ ich ehrlich gesagt erst letzte Woche.” - “How’s it going with your master’s thesis. Are you making progress?”
“Meh, so and so. Like… I actually really started only last week.”
This is even weirder. The verb itself has been moved forward. I don’t even know how to create a similar effect in English. There’s a lot of tension and there’s a strong focus on richtig angefangen but again… it makes perfect sense. Starting is a part of writing a master’s thesis. And so it was already part in some way part of the conversation, even though it wasn’t named specifically. The real news in the sentence is last week. That’s what we learn, and that’s at the very end.
Now, we could go on going over examples forever but hey.. it’s not these details that you’ll remember. So let’s just stop here and do the rest in the comments.
What matters is that you got a feel for the basic idea. German is a head final language and that shows big time in word order. The set up comes first and with it the subject and all the stuff we already know. Then comes the pay off, the news we learn in the sentence and the most defining element of that comes last.
And that’s the secret of word order. Not rules. Just a natural story progression.
Now, I actually wanted to include an extra bit about position 1 as well as some words about oral emphasis. But I’m tired and I really need a break from word order now so we’ll do it in a nutshell.
On position 1:
Stuff that was early anyway will sound natural in position 1 and won’t create any notable emphasis. Stuff that comes late will create a strong emphasis and you need a good reason to do it. Grammar filler cannot be put into position 1.
- [Gestern/ich] habe [ich] mir [gestern] ein Bier gekauft…. natural
- Ein Bier habe ich mir gestern gekauft. … emphasis on beer.
On oral emphasis:
The interaction between oral emphasis and word order is too complex to describe it. Sometimes oral emphasis is needed to justify an order, sometimes oral emphasis can overrule the order and shift focus.
- Ich habe DIR das Buch gegeben. … oral stress shifts focus from book to dir
- Ich habe das Buch DIR gegeben… sentence only sounds right with the oral emphasis there.
And I think that’s it. That was our mini series on word order.
Obviously, there’s a lot of Sprachgefühl involved, so don’t get frustrated if not everything you’re trying out, works. But I hope you got an impression that German word order is not a wild forest of random rules and exceptions but a fascinating, dynamic and flexible thing that you can only get a hold of if you’re able to “let go”. Common sense, intuition and the stuff we’ve learned should get you much further than rules.
Now, there are heaps of specific cases and structures that don’t immediately fit in with what we’ve said and that could use some explaining. So let’s collect them here in the comments. If you come across an order that is weird or that seems to defy what we’ve said, just post it and we can analyze it together.
And of course, if you have general questions about what we’ve learned today, or something wasn’t quite clear or didn’t make sense just leave a comment and I’ll try to clear it up.
Next week we’ll do something softer. That was a spoiler by the way. Until then, have some great days.
Bis nächstes mal :)
Hi Emanuel,
I read in a German grammar workbook recently that placing an element in first position gives that element emphasis. One of the examples it gave for this was:
‘Meiner Mutter habe ich das Buch geschenkt, nicht meiner Schwester’.
Is this correct?
My understanding from your very helpful guidance is that, in the sentence, ‘Meiner Mutter habe ich das Buch geschenkt’, emphasis naturally falls on ‘Buch’, which is to say that the sentence tells us what was gifted to my mother (rather than who the book was gifted to).
If my understanding is correct, would the above sentence make more sense if it read: ‘Meiner Mutter habe ich das Buch geschenkt, nicht die Blumen’?
And, to emphasise and contrast who the book was gifted to, would the German be better if it read: ‘Ich habe das Buch meiner Mutter geschenkt, nicht meiner Schwester’ or ‘Das Buch habe ich meiner Mutter geschenkt, nicht meiner Schwester’?
Thank you.
It’s partially correct.
Putting an element into position 1 CAN give it emphasis but ONLY if position 1 is not its usual or neutral place.
If you put ‘heute’ into position 1 for example, not much emphasis happens because it’s one of its normal spots.
– Heute war ich beim Yoga.
– Ich war heute beim Yoga.
There isn’t really a relevant difference here.
Also, position 1 is used to connect a sentence to the previous one.
– Heute war schlechtes Wetter. Deshalb war ich die ganze Zeit zuhause.
Deshalb is mainly in position 1 because it links up to the sentence before, so P1 is its natural habitat so to speak.
The example you gave DOES have some focus though because the receiver would (my mom) would NOT typically be in first position.
It’s always a question of: are we deviating from the neutral order. Yes? Emphasis and focus is created.
Buch is in its normal position near the end, so nothing special there, while mother first is a bit unusual.
However, the real emphasis depends on HOW you say it. If you put an aural emphasis on Buch, then it gets the main emphasis, while Mother has a secondary one.
THIS has a clear cut focus on mother because mother is out of position AND it’s the last element before the verb.
‘Das Buch habe ich meiner Mutter geschenkt, nicht meiner Schwester’?
Same here, but the “nicht meiner Schwester” part makes it happen. If you take that out, you could also read it as BOOK having a special emphasis.
– Das BUCH hab ich meiner Mutter geschenkt, nicht das Spiel.
Does that help?
Thank you. Yes, I think so.
So, how would you translate into German the sentence: ‘I gifted the book to my mother, not to my sister’?
Thank you.
I’d go for this when writing:
– Ich habe das Buch meiner Mutter gegeben, nicht meiner Schwester.
And when speaking, I’d just use aural emphasis.
– Ich habe MEINER MUTTER das Buch gegeben, nicht meiner Schwester.
Putting Mutter first is something I’d only do if I wanted to clear up a misunderstanding.
– So your sister has the book now, correct?
– NEIN! MEINER MUTTER habe ich das Buch gegeben, nicht meiner schwester.
Bottom line is, though, that you shouldn’t worry too much about this. What matters is that you understand the basic principles. If those then feel imprecise to you then that’s because they are :)
This is brilliant. Thanks very much, Emanuel.
Hi Emanuel.
In the sentence ‘Ein Bier habe ich mir gestern gekauft’, are we saying that the defining information for the action of the verb (the beer) is, contrary to the norm, positioned at the very beginning of the sentence?
In other words, would this statement be an answer to the question ‘was hast du dir gestern gekauft?’.
Could you please provide a context in which this sentence might naturally occur. Thank you.
You have to see it from both ends.
Bier has been moved out of place but also “gestern” is in an unusual spot now.
Maybe you just want to stress a beer, maybe you want to stress yesterday and “a beer” is just a callback.
– When did you last buy a beer?
– Ein Bier habe ich mir GESTERN gekauft.
The question “Was hast du dir gestern gekauft?” does not help here, because the neutral position for beer would be at the end before the verb.
But you can put it front if there’s reason. Maybe the person should or could know already for example.
This is really helpful. Thank you.
Hey Emmanuel, this was such a great eye opening lesson on word order. Really understood what’s going on under the hood and can also feel the language better than before.
However, I do have one doubt in this long example “Thomas hat sich gestern ein Hörbuch bestellt. Am Samstag hat er es beim Aufräumen gehört. Danach hat er es Maria gegeben. Sie hatte es sich aber schon aus dem Internet heruntergeladen… illegal natürlich. Deshalb war sie sehr erschrocken als sie einen Brief der Polizei in ihrem Briefkasten fand. Sie hat das ihrem Anwalt erzählt….”
Why does “in ihrem Briefkasten” come later than “einen Brief der Polizei”? Isn’t the latter more defining and relevant to the verb “fand”? So shouldn’t “einen Brief der Polizei” come after “in ihrem Briefkasten”? If I’m wrong, then I believe it is because “location” is the next important thing after “what” to the verb “find” and for some reason this additional relevant info comes in between the “what” and the verb?
Great question!
Yes, generally, the direct object would be what you’d ask about first when someone says “I found []”. Like… you’d ask “WHAT” before you’d ask “where”.
However, here “finden” is not really about finding in the narrow sense. The letter was not hidden. It’s more like the phrase “etwas im Briefkasten finden” is a paraphrasing of “getting by mail”.
“im Briefkasten” is part of the verb here in a way.
But you can split it up:
– … hat im Briefkasten einen Brief der Polizei gefunden.
This isn’t much different, just that the letter gets a tiny bit more focus than before.
Does that help?
Yeah, that actually cleared up my confusion. It makes sense that the letter was not hidden, and that being a phrase with “what where finden” woven together in the order you mentioned because “where” is also a crucial piece of info to “finden” that naturally comes after “what”.
I just remembered from your past tense lesson that you mentioned that ‘gefunden’ is used in past for literal “finding something” and ‘fand’ for past abstract “how did you find this” kinda things right, so how are we using fand here for telling “She found a letter”?
Another great question.
Part of the reason why “fand” sound better in the longer example is that the whole thing has a narrative tone. Someone is “telling a story”. Also, the “fand” is in an “als” sentence and even though the “perfective” nature of “spoken past” is irrelevant in daily life, it’s still in the DNA and sometimes, it comes out. An “als”-sentence describes a moment in the past and there is ZERO interest in completion. The spoken past and especially the ge-form evolved out of a sense of “completion”. The ge-prefix meant just that – completing, coming together, result.
But in an als-sentence, none of this matters at all. You just want to say what was going on when something else happened.
– Sie war sehr erschrocken, als sie den Brief gefunden hat.
This is a bit unclear actually. Was she shocked after the “finding” was complete. Or was she shocked the during the finding. “fand” is clear in that regard.
Hope that helps :)
Ahh that makes sense now. So the ge-form gives us a notion of completion and thus the sentence that meant “the shocking happened during the finding” was actually right in using ‘fand’.
Thank you so much Emmanuel. Really been enjoying all your lessons.
Happy to help. You can always reach me in the comments for clarification on stuff.
You articles really do open my eyes, why german sentences are the way they are. However, when I first googled “german correct order”, if I’d found your 3-part dissertation instead of one-line TeKaMoLo, I might have chosen to do something else with my life. This doesn’t feel like beginner’s staff.
One thing I don’t really understand, is illustrated in your example at the end of the article:
This article is definitely due a review and the way I express myself is probably not super clear in a lot of places :). This is definitely one such example.
Moving an element early or into position 1 does not automatically create emphasis.
What creates emphasis, as a general rule, is “deviation from norm”.
I think I talk about that somewhere in this series, but don’t remember where.
Whenever you deviate from how things normally are, you create tension. Think of it as pulling elements out of their normal slot.
And that tension leads to “attention” and “emphasis”. If there is too much tension or the emphasis makes no sense, it’ll sound wrong, otherwise, you just created emphasis.
Having “ein Bier” in position 1 is very unusual, so that’s why there’s the emphasis.
The head-final paradigm is what gives elements their normal slot. Then, there is no real special emphasis other than what is natural for a given sentence.
By default elements that are not that “important” trend left. Like “es” or “sich” as extreme examples.
But if you take an element that is normally at the end because of how defining it is for the action, and you move that all the way to the front, you’re creatig a LOT of emphasis, simply because you create a LOT of tension.
Does that help?
Does that mean that I can also create tension by moving element (like time) to the right?
Can I do both at the same time, moving one element to the left and the other to the right, creating double-edged attention grabber? Would that ever make sense?
Well, you cannot move an element right without having other elements move left :).
It’s not always clear what was moved and what just shifted out of place because something moved.
But the emphasis is always potentially on an element that is “very” out of place.
– Ich gehe in den Park mit Maria morgen.
Here, “in den Park” is very out of place, so it COULD have emphasis, but you’d need to confirm it aurally to make it work. “morgen” sits at the end now as if it was your main message, so that one can have emphasis too.
But it’s not as simple as “You move, and you create emphasis.” The emphasis needs to make sense, and if it’s a lot of tension, you need to confirm the emphasis with tone of voice. Otherwise it’ll sound wrong.
Danke.
It’s not exactly beginners stuff, but it’s not complicated either.
TeKaMoLo is not really that easy because the student has to understand what “ka” and “mo” actually are and properly identify them in a sentence. It SOUNDS like it’s a quick easy help, but it isn’t, imo. All people use it for in practice is “time before place”.
I think it is possible to introduce the idea of “Where does the verb live” in A1. Head-final is not difficult after all, it just needs getting used to for verbs.
I think I could make it work in a textbook, for sure, but yeah… online it’s very difficult to convince a beginner to read a three part series like this :)
Anyway, I’m really happy that it did what it is meant to do and you kind of “see” word order for what it really is in German now.
By the way… if you haven’t read it yet, maybe this might be interesting:
https://yourdailygerman.com/my-coming-book-sample-chapter-2/
It’s the same concept, but written recently, so it’s not as “messy”.
I admit that you word order series is great! However, I got lost with the wolf sentence, and the explanations after that causes bad words to come from my mouth. Does the second wolf sentence take jemand in the blank. Is jemand not part of the passive voice?
Also, my focus is on grammar and writing. I won’t be writing no academic or formal essays. In American and British English, when one writes, he can be more flexible with grammar and emphasis. Is that true for German?
Danke.
Just so you know, sometimes I hate you and other times I love you. ;-)
Actually, the empty space was just there to make it more visible that the sentences are the same pretty much.
I have changed that now and added translations for each one.
– Am Sonntag wurden in der Nähe des Dorfes zum ersten Mal seit 30 Jahren Wölfe gesehen.
Yes, this is passive voice, the subject is “wolves”. You can move it further left but that will instantly create tension and thus emphasis on whatever you chose to put behind wolves.
“In American and British English, when one writes, he can be more flexible with grammar and emphasis. Is that true for German?”
Not sure what you mean here. Or let’s say, I don’t think there’s a meaningful difference.
English word order is very strict.
– On Sunday, wolves were seen near the village for the first time in 30 years.
You can shuffle around the elements to an extent. I think the degree of freedom is about the same or slightly less than in the same sentence in German. The underlying paradigms are a bot different.
You can think of an English sentence as a planetary system with the verb being at the center and the rest orbiting it order of “relevance”.
– Wolves were seen for the first time near the village on Sunday.
– For the first time, wolves were seen near the village on Sunday.
– On Sunday, near the village, wolves were seen for the first time.
– For the first time, near the village, wolves were seen on Sunday.
….
In German, the pole of gravity (the verb) is at the END, and more weighty elements are closer to it.
Thank you for answering my questions in such detail and fixing the “jemand.” Passive voice. Got it. :-) No subject up front.
I understand that the verb is the most important element in a German sentence. What I mean by flexible grammar is that if I am writing casually…
– The villagers who were mean to the wolves were savagely, justly eaten.
Standard passive–emphasis on the mean villagers being eaten.
– The villagers, having been mean to the wolves, got themselves savagely, justly eaten.
Using a verbal phrase as a modifier, I am emphasizing the villagers in active voice. Also, I am being more casual with “got themselves…eaten.” Grammatically, this sentence has issues, but I can write what I write because I know the rules and how to break them for a purpose.
– The wolves savagely (justly) ate the villagers who were mean to the wolves.
The parenthesis take the place of a comma and emphasize “justly.”
– The wolves savagely and justly ate the villagers who had treated the wolves cruelly.
This sentence is the most formal of the four.
As a woman of letters, the sentences all mean the same thing, but they have slightly different nuances. The last example is the most grammatically correct and formal.
Another example is dangling prepositions.
– Casually…What are you talking about?
– Formally…About what are you speaking?
I also get that the later in the sentence an element is, the more important it is.
I am determined to understand German grammar and the language…
With the case system, I understand how German is more flexible, but still, there are sentences (as you showed) that just don’t work if flipped around too much.
Well, you can do similar paraphrasings in German.
– Die Dorfbewohner, die gemein zu den Wölfen gewesen waren, wurden wild und gerechtfertigterweise gegessen.
– Die Dorfbewohner, gerade noch gemein zu den Wölfen, wurden wild und gerechtfertigterweise gegessen.
– Die Wölfe haben … die Dorfbewohner, die gemein zu ihnen waren, gegessen.
– Die Wölfe haben… die Dorfbewohner gegessen, die gemein zu ihnen waren.
What German doesn’t do as well are these -ing-based descriptions like “having been mean to the wolves”. The grammar term is participle constructions and English is much bigger with participle 1. German cannot always mimic that.
The key thing about sentence structure is that you have to look at each sentence individually. If you change an element (by using a pronoun) the internal states will shift.
In the case of a participle construction and relative clauses… you can look at these as “slot-fillers”
– the [slot 1] noun [slot 2]
slot 1 and slot 2 can take in further descriptions of “noun”, like adjectives, participle constructions or relative clauses.
The whole phrase together forms the box.
And changing something from slot 2 to slot 1 will NOT affect sentence structure, because you’re just shifting things inside around in the box, you’re not changing the content. Only if the content changes, the structure might change.
The last bit was a bit of a tangent, but maybe it’s useful :)
Happy to follow up further!
Thank you! I really like the box explanation. It makes sense in German and English, too. Many thanks! Blessings. :-)
Oh, I forgot:
– Über was redest du? (colloquial, less smooth)
– Worüber redest du? (standard, smoother)
That’d be the equivalent to the dangling preposition example you gave. They don’t dangle in German, but you do have two options.
If I would change the sentence
“Ich habe meiner Freundin eine Waage gekauft”
to include the pronouns sie and ihr instead, in which order would I write these?
Would it be “Ich habe ihr sie gekauft?” or “Ich habe sie ihr gekauft” and why? I’m thinking it’s the first alternative but I’m not 100% sure.
The second option. The direct object as a pronoun has less “weight” and trends left. The Dative has a bit more weight. You can think of it as “it to her”. The “to her” element has a bit more content than the simple “it”.
I don’t know if you will read this since it is an older post but I have a question regarding the
‘Ich habe mich gestern im Fernsehen gesehen.’
sentence. Surely the most important question for the verb sehen would be was / wen. And yet ‘mich’ is in the ‘boring’ spot.
Why is that? Would replacing it with ‘Barbara’ move it to the end of the sentence?
I reply to every comment. Don’t worry about the age of the articles, they don’t get outdated so quickly, luckily.
The answer to your question has two parts:
1) “mich” is a pronoun. Those stand for something that is already part of the scene and hence come rather early.
2) “im Fernsehen sehen” can be thought of as a bit of a unit here. If I tell you “I saw you yesterday.” you’d want to know where, and you’d think it’s an actual place.
You can think of “im Fernsehen sehen” a bit like “Fußball spielen” or something similar. It’s a phrase that constitutes a specific action, not a verb with a specification.
Let’s modify the example a bit:
– Ich habe gestern Thomas am Bahnhof gesehen.
– Ich habe gestern am Bahnhof Thomas gesehen.
These two are really similar and both work. I’d say that the first one sounds a bit more neutral while the second one has a slight emphasis on Thomas. The reason could be that “Thomas” is known to speaker and listener, so it’s a bit less “new” than what we have in the following.
– Ich habe gestern einen sehr großen Mann am Bahnhof gesehen.
– Ich habe gestern am Bahnhof einen sehr großen Mann gesehen.
Here, the second one is the most neutral and normal. The first one is still okay though.
– Ich habe dich gestern am Bahnhof gesehen. (neutral)
– Ich habe gestern am Bahnhof dich gesehen. (rather big tension)
You have to think of word order as an interplay of often opposing forces, rather than one simply system. “connection to verb” pulls to the right, “recall/part of scene” pulls to the left.
Let me know if that helps.
Thank you for taking the time to answer! I think it helps, we have a flexible word order in polish as well so I can draw a few parallels here.
From what little I know about Slavic languages, they tend to be a bit more flexible with word order than German.
I think a good thing to observe and explore is how positions of elements are in relation to the verb depending on whether the element is new, known or pronoun/adverb.
– Yesterday, I saw a guy in a restaurant.
– Yesterday, I saw the guy…
– Yesterday, I saw him…
And then play around with word order (if possible) with all three sentences in Polish and see what works and what doesn’t and if there’s any “system”.
That might give you a better feeling than just looking up the rules online :)
okay, I am speechless, I can only applaud for this series of articles on word order! I loved it, so many insights and new perspectives that are definitely gonna help me in learning German!
but of course I will have to give it a read again later on, since there was some much to digest at one go. Very enlightening!
Wow, thank you for the great feedback!!
This series is actually long overdue an edit but I’m really happy it’s valuable even if it could be consolidated and freshened up.
Shouldn’t her secretary be dative? Direkt als erstes erzählt ihr IHRER Sekretärin
Actually “ihre Sekretärin” is the subject. The secretary does the telling and the manager is the indirect object “ihr”.
– Direkt als erstes erzählte ihr (to her) ihre Sekretärin…
Hope that helps.
Got it thanks
Manuel I really am at a loss for words. You cleared up, in my opinion, the most difficult topic in German in such an insightful, out-of-the-box and unorthodox way, not following suit to any rules written in traditional grammar books, and it’s a real sight to behold. Your way of teaching goes hand in hand with the way I learn languages. That is, through pattern recognition, immersion and intuition. I never try to learn anything by heart. Instead I try to understand THE REASON and THE LOGIC and once I get the hang of it, I never forget it. The idea of word order being a movie scene is simply PURE GENIUS! Abstraction is a really powerful tool and I am always so happy when people like you explain things their own way.
I wish all teachers could be so good and AWESOME like you! Keep doing what you do!
(Btw all of this rant also applies for the Zustandspassiv. That article was a life saver ;)
Hello Emanuel
After I’ve read this article, I feel much more understanding about German word-ordering. However, I still have some questions which I would like to ask further.
Because I am from a country which the native language structure is “head-initial” (the core is put before the complement). For me, I feel that this structure is quite advantageous/straightforward as we know the point (core) which we want to know/hear first.
However, “head-final” is the opposite because a background/stage is set first before news. you need to wait until the core is reached to understand the concept of the sentences. therefore, I’d like to ask (from your point of view) about the benefit or advantage of using head-final languages like German in your opinion?
Thank you so much
Tough question!
Maybe the fact that people have to listen could be a benefit of “head final” because you don’t know the actual topic if you interrrupt too early.
But that’s NOT why these languages evolved that way.
You see, in our minds, things are not organized in a linear fashion, but as concepts. “my old red bike” is a concept, a cluster of information and it’s not dependent on the order of the pieces. In your mind, it’s a “whole”.
Speaking is a linear act though, so we do have to order the pieces. And in that sense, both orders are just as likely, and there are also mixed forms.
– der große Mann, der in der Bar arbeitet,
This is one concept and it’s essentially expressed with “head center”. So part of the information is before the main noun, part of it is behind.
When we listen, we collect these pieces together until we get a signal that the “unit” is complete.
In that sense, I could maybe argue that “head final” is actually easier, because the boundary is more clear. You know immediately when a unit is complete, whereas with head first, you need to parse some grammar clues to know it.
– the old green bike annoys me
– the bike, green, old, annoys me
In the first example, you know immediately that the concept “old green bike” is complete without even readig further. In the second example, which uses a fictional “head first” order, you do NOT know that the unit is complete until you read the verb “annoys” and your grammar brain tells you “oh, that’s a verb, so we’re in a new unit now”.
That’s not to say that the languages “chose” these benefits. They just evolved, because head first and head final are in fact equally as likely because in your mind, the concept is a multidimensional unit, that you just “linearize” to express it.
Hope that helps.
Hallo und gut gemacht!
I have a question in the section called “Must-haves early”
You state:
“Thomas could also have seen someone else on TV. So here, the self reference does make a difference for the message. And that’s why other positions are possible.
and then you said that the other positions of mich were possible.
Should the sentence subject have been Thomas in this example, because I thought with Ich the position of mich should be the most early?
Actually, yeah, I think I wanted to use Thomas in the example but it really doesn’t matter who the subject is an who gets seen.
The possible positions are always the same for the context because the context is
– Someone saw someone on TV yesterday.
And you can have all kinds of configurations, like me seeing Thomas, Thomas seeing me, Thomas seeing himself or me seeing myself.
The roles don’t change, and so neither do the possible “slots”.
Does that help?
That said, I’m not sure if I mention it in the article, so here again:
The LATER the reflexive comes, the more emphasis it gets. The most neutral sounding position is indeed early.
Hello Emanuel.
May I ask which sentence (out of these two) is more proper?
1st: Ich habe gestern im Supermarkt mein Brot gekauft.
2nd: Ich habe mein Brot gestern im Supermarkt gekauft.
I am not sure of the answer. Because “mein Brot”, in my opinion, seems not much of a background component like “das Brot”. However, I also feel that it still has some background component because it relates to “I”.
Thank you so much in advance
Not sure what you mean with “background component”.
But both sentences are proper.
The second one sounds like “Brot” was already the topic and you tell us more about it, while the first one sounds more like you’re talking about what you did yesterday.
Thank you so much Emanuel.
Actually, I wanted to say “a set-up stuff” instead of “a background component”. (I apologize for my improper English)
Based on your explanation, does it mean that “mein Brot” is normally not considered as a set-up stuff (that’s the reason why it’s ok to be put next to the verb)? However, it can be also considered as a set-up stuff (like Das Brot) if we want by putting it at an early position of a sentence.
This is different from the case of “Das Brot” as we shouldn’t really put it next to the verb, because “Das Brot” is definitely a set-up stuff.
May I confirm if my understanding is correct?
Thank you so much again.
Actually, “mein Brot” is more setup-ish than “das Brot” because it is tied to the subject already. In most contexts, you won’t just say a statement out of the blue with “mein Brot” in it.
Both “das Brot” and “mein Brot” are “specific” breads, which usually means the listener knows what bread we’re talking about. But depending on the context, the can also come next to the verb.
I think you’re over-analyzing this a bit :).
You can almost never say that something is “definitely” setup. It always depends on what the sentence looks like and what the intended message is.
Hello Emanuel.
Thank you so much for your answer. That is totally clear.
Hello Emanuel. May I ask additional questions regarding German word-ordering as below?
1.Which sentence is more proper when there is a propositional object in the sentence which seems the more important news than the most defining element (for verb)?
Example 1: “Er ist auch glücklich” and “Er ist glücklich auch”
Example 2: “Er ist gut für mich” and “Er ist für mich gut”
Example 3: “Meine Tante steckt ein Brief in eine Tasche” and “Meine Tante steckt in eine Tasche ein Brief”
In my opinion,
Example 1: “auch” seems the news that I want to say but “glücklich” seems the most defining element for the verb “ist”
Example 2: “für mich” seems the news that I want to say but “gut” seems the most defining element for the verb “ist”
Example 3: “in eine Tasche” seems the news that I want to say even though “ein Brief” is the most defining element for the verb “steckt”
In conclusion, based on the examples I gave, I feel that there are several sentences which their most interesting news are not the most defining elements (for verbs). I am not sure how to properly make German word-ordering in this case?
Could you suggest?
Thank you so much
1.
“auch” can not be at the end. The verb is “sein” and the adjective is the defining element, with “auch” defining the adjective, if you will. Yes, “auch” is the news, but it’s a qualifier for “glücklich”.
You could say
– Ich bin es auch.
2. Both are correct, but generally “gut für mich” is preferable because “für mich” feels like part of “gut”. It’s a closer specification of it rather than an independent element in the sentence.
3. “stecken” is a positioning verb, so the most defining element is (based on feeling to me) the location, and not the direct object.
The version where “in eine Tasche” comes before the letter sounds quite weird.
Does that help?
You’ll have to live with a certain amount of uncertainty about this unfortunately :).
There’s no reason why the direct object couldn’t be the most defining element for “stecken” for instance, but it’s just not. Rules only take us so far :)
Hello Emanuel
Thank you so much
based on your explanation, I think I can use what you taught/wrote about the intuition of word-ordering on my German learning journey without feeling overwhelm
Hallo Emanuel!
Alle Artikel in dieser Reihe waren einfach super! Jetzt denke ich immer daran, wenn ich neue Sätze erstelle. Mega originell und super hilfreich! Nie hat jemand mir das gelehrt.
Vielen Dank!
Toll, freut mich zu hören :)
Hello Emanuel
I’ve 2 questions about the German word-ordering which I can’t find the answers by myself yet.
Thank you so much in advance
very interesting questions, anyone can explain?
Not sure why I never saw this comment, but good you commented here, so now I can reply :)
1) Why is the verb in second position in a normal sentence?
No idea. It used to be more free, but then it settled there and at the end.
2) How do you feel differently…
I don’t know how to answer that. A side sentence and a main sentence do feel very different, they feel like different building blocks.
3.)
You do know what you are going to say. You know that what you’re doing is “going to the park” so it’s no problem to just add a bunch of specifics before that.
Just like you wouldn’t forget the noun in a phrase that has plenty of adjectives.
You know the entire time that you’re talking about a shirt. It’s one unit in your mind and you just express it in a linearized way.
Same for actions… they’re one unit and you linearize them to express them. Some languages say the verb first, others say it last. It has to be somewhere, but in our minds the concept of “I went to the park yesterday” is one blob, one unit. Not a linear chain of information.
In the example for “Early Pronouns”, I think you switched when you explained it. You say in the second version the item bought is refered by es, but that would be in the first one, right?
Anyway, is just a typo or I’m the one who is mistaken. The whole article is great, like always.
Oh, you’re totally right! Thanks, I fixed it :)!
Are “boxes” always, sometimes or never separated by commas?
Sometimes.
When they have the same function, then they get commas.
– Ich esse [eine Pizza], [ein Stück Kuchen], [eine Wurst] und ein Ei.
The rest of the commas coordinate sentences pretty much.
So, when shifting order for emphasis, like in “Mich hat heute keiner angerufen.” and “Richtig angefangen hab’ ich ehrlich gesagt erst letzte Woche.”, the emphasis will always aftect both the term that is advanced and the term that ends up in the end of the sentence? Or will there be situations where only the term that is advanced, or only the one that ends the sentence, will be emphasized?
You kind of answered the question yourself without noticing :).
The first example you gave does create an emphasis on both, “mich” and “keiner”, just as you marked it. Because both are shifted away from their normal spot.
The second example has an emphasis on the first one (which here is used also to tie the sentence into the flow of the narration) but there is no other element really out of place. “letzte Woche” gets a focus by virtue of being last, but it would have equal focus if the “richtig angefangen” came behind it.
Does that help :)?
I think i get the basic idea besides some particular sentences.
For example:
“Gestern hat Thomas auf dem Markt trotz Marias Protest vier verschiedene Sorten Stinkekäse gekauft.”
Shouldn’t “auf dem Markt” be said after “trotz Marias Protest” because the answer for “from where?” is generally more important than “in spite of what?” ? (which i consider to be the same value with “how?”)
“Am Sonntag hat jemand
in der Nähe des Dorfeszum ersten Mal seit 30 Jahren Wölfe gesehen.”“Ich habe
fast 100 verpasste Anrufeaus dem Büro”The latter two are confusing to me for the same reason. I feel like
These Onesshould come later.If you could clear that up, it would be so helpful.
Thanks in advance.
Nice questions!
Generally, it is important to not be too strict about this stuff. Yes, your argument of “from where” being generally more interesting to “kaufen” than a “how” is true.
But it’s not really all that closely linked either. Both “how” and “from where” are somewhat optional and so their order doesn’t have that big an effect.
That said, if you look at this sentence in particular, the act is “buying 4 types of smelly cheese”. In within the context of the story you’re telling the portion about Maria is definitely more interesting that the market. The story wouldn’t change if he had bought it elsewhere. What matters to you when you say this sentence is to tell a story about Thomas and Maria’s couple dynamic, if you will.
Also, if you switch market and protest, then it could be understood as her protesting that he buys it on the MARKET as opposed to the store.
As for the other two sentences… the position of the Dorf-part is the perfect example for when it doesn’t matter. You can move it right up before Wölfe and the feel woulnd’t change.
Generally, yes, location is a bit more interesting for “sehen” than the other stuff, but then again “zum ersten Mal seit 30 Jahren” is what makes the sighting special, not the fact that it’s near the village. You can see the “village” as part of the scene and you’re telling the story of what happened there.
The last one is a different thing because “aus dem Büro” feels like a part of “Anrufe”. It’s one object-unit. There is no hard boundary between it being part of the unit or a separate entity, but you’d tend to answer
“What do you have?”
With “100 calls from the office” rather than just “100 calls”.
Hope that helps :)
My general advice would be to not focus too much on a sentence to analyze it. Instead “squint” your mental eyes, so everything gets a little blurry. When you look at it in too high resolution, you’ll miss the bigger picture.
NOt sure if that makes sense :)
Wow, this was such a great explanation to the order of those sentences. So you’re basically asking to look at the context and the progression of the story of what we’re trying to say, and see what’s interesting in that sentence with the overall context in mind and place that later.
So I think this kind of thinking to form sentences naturally comes from practice, by speaking to Germans, by consuming German media, etc. where we come across all kinds of contexts and finally make it natural to the brain.
I have never seen any German sentence and word order explanations this deep and intuitive , you really are one of a kind Emanuel. Thank you again.
Happy to hear it resonates. Yes, the feeling will come with exposure and usage. A bit like noticing tension in your body. You can go through your day and never notice the tension you’re holding. The same way, you can say or read something and not really be aware of the tension in the structure. But every now, you can have these moments of “Oh… I feel this. There’s tension and it makes sense.” and that way the intuition builds.
And I think it’s important to let go of the desire to have a super clear answer. Often, at least 2 versions of a sentence are equally “neutral” sounding.