Word order and inverted subjects—should the pronoun have directly followed the verb in this sentence?

Question

Ich lerne Deutsch an meiner Uni, und ich habe eine Frage über word order.

I wrote the following sentence for a practice oral exam in our class:

Ich wollte heute Schnitzel essen, aber wir wohnen in den USA, und deshalb hat die Mensa sie nicht gehabt.

I was wondering if that last part is grammatically correct. What I wanted to say is "thus, the cafeteria did not have it," where "it" is "sie" (die Schnitzel).

I suspect I should have inverted the subject and instead written:

...und deshalb hat sie die Mensa nicht gehabt.

Would that have been the technically correct word order?

Danke!

Answer 1

As a native speaker both are perfectly understandable. The first one doesn't sound as good as the second one though. I've heard some other Germans use the first one. However I would stylistically prefer this solution:

Ich wollte heute Schnitzel essen, aber da wir in den USA wohnen, gab es in der Mensa keine.

Bitteschön!

Answer 2

[...] deshalb hat sie die Mensa nicht gehabt

and

[...] deshalb hat die Mensa sie nicht gehabt

are both correct.

The word order of "sie" and "die Mensa" doesn't matter in this case.

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However the whole sentence sounds a little awkward.

Ich wollte heute Schnitzel essen, aber wir wohnen in den USA und deshalb gab es in der Mensa keins / keine.

is what you would normally hear.

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As far as word order is concerned, these two links might be of interest for you:

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