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Can anyone tell me please whether this sentence

Ich habe den ganzen Tag verbracht Deutsch zu lernen

is correct or not, if it's not correct can you tell me the right structure with same meaning

1 Answer 1

8

You are very close. You are just missing one word:

Ich habe den ganzen Tag damit verbracht, Deutsch zu lernen.

The structure is "etwas mit etwas verbringen". Since you use an erweiterter Infinitiv mit zu for the prepositional phrase "mit etwas", you need to insert the Verweiswort (Präpositionalpronom) "damit" because a preposition cannot just be omitted. If the erweiterter Infinitiv mit zu refers to such a Verweiswort, the comma is mandatory.

Other such Verweisworte are danach, darüber, davon, dafür, daran, dadurch ... They all are build by putting da(r)- in front of the preposition.

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  • Is "den ganzen Tag" here in the accusative case because it's a temporal adverbial expression, as in (Wir waren den ganzen Tag unterwegs)...or because it is an accusative object to "verbringen"? Aug 17, 2021 at 15:01
  • The latter ....
    – user6495
    Aug 17, 2021 at 15:16
  • While Roland's answer is perfectly valid, you could also say „Ich habe den ganzen Tag mit Deutschlernen verbracht“. Aug 18, 2021 at 15:32
  • Is Deutschlernen a word? Aug 19, 2021 at 22:40

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