40 votes

Word order in German. Shouldn't Duolingo accept this answer?

The word order Ich schlafe im Auto in meiner Pause. sounds odd to me as a native speaker. The reason is that if time and place are placed after the verb, time comes first. This rule applies if there ...
RHa's user avatar
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22 votes
Accepted

Word order in German. Shouldn't Duolingo accept this answer?

Your sentence Ich schlafe im Auto in meiner Pause. is totally fine. I really don't know, why Duolingo would flag it as wrong. You're right: there is nothing wrong with your word order since German ...
Olafant's user avatar
  • 7,690
20 votes
Accepted

What accounts for this word order?

Ich werde tun is incorrect because there is an object missing. A way to correct this is to add a prounoun, for example a das: Das werde ich tun. Now, in spoken German it is possible to omit a ...
RHa's user avatar
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16 votes
Accepted

What's the meaning of "Man weiß halt gefühlt nichts"?

I'm just a native speaker, I'll try: The former. Although I would translate it to "It's like one knows nothing". For the sake of simplicity, we can ignore "halt" (simply). "...
Kobrabiss's user avatar
  • 196
15 votes
Accepted

Order of words in a question: "Kann mir jemand..."

The secret is: Pronoun before noun Kann Peter Klaus helfen? Normal word order. Peter is subject, Klaus is object, so Peter helps Klaus. Kannst du Klaus helfen? Still normal word order. ...
Em1's user avatar
  • 38.5k
15 votes

Difference between two possibilities for a warning label

The typical German instruction manual idiom would be: Nur bei Stillstand des Fahrzeugs zurücksetzen. Your first variant wenn angehalten would imply to a German reader that the tripmeter itself had ...
Tilman Schmidt's user avatar
14 votes

What's the meaning of "Man weiß halt gefühlt nichts"?

Maybe you've heard about the gefühlte Temperatur, or in English the apparent temperature: The temperature that humans perceive can be different from the temperature objectively measured by a ...
Henning Kockerbeck's user avatar
13 votes

Why is the verb in 3rd position?

The verb is still in second position. Sogar is a particle which modifies the subsequent part of the sentence. So it should be regarded as [Sogar meine Tante] [hatte] [einen Ausdruck]. This is the ...
infinitezero's user avatar
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13 votes
Accepted

Is the sentence "Er trifft seine Mitbewohner im Café jeden Tag" wrong ? Why?

It's marked because of word order. In general, out of order items are allowed in German but they appear emphasised that way. So it's not wrong. Just odd. In particular, German allows you to put one ...
Janka's user avatar
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12 votes
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When does “haben” push “nicht” to the end of the sentence?

What Thorsten Link wrote is correct, but I like to give another example on how to place the nicht. I give a bit too literal translations to emphasize it. (And a note on Examen: it's Prüfung, always. ...
Janka's user avatar
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12 votes
Accepted

Separable verbs: “hängt von … ab” or “hängt ab von …”

This grammar feature is called prepositional phrase in the Nachfeld, and it's not restricted to separable verbs (though it's easier to notice with separable verbs). Basically, when you have a long ...
dirkt's user avatar
  • 6,986
12 votes

“Ich sah fünf Flugzeuge abheben.” – How to transform to the perfect tense?

Transforming the following sentence: Ich sah fünf Flugzeuge abheben. to perfect yields: Ich habe fünf Flugzeuge abheben sehen. The rule is that if a perfect participle (Partizip II) follows an ...
RHa's user avatar
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12 votes

Can this word order be rearranged?

The idea of keeping the finite verb and participles/infinitives together does not apply here, as the infinitive clause does not belong closely to the finite verb. It's an object. Dann bekam er die ...
Janka's user avatar
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10 votes
Accepted

Word order in composite sentence?

Note that both in the English original and in the proper German sentence, the second part is, in fact, a subordinate clause that is introduced by whether in English — and that can luckily be ...
Jan's user avatar
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10 votes
Accepted

Tensed verb preceding infinitive verb in modal relative clauses?

The reason they put the sentence in this order is a pun with a very common German proverb of unknown origin: Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen. The word order was ...
Takkat's user avatar
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10 votes

Bevorzugte Reihenfolge bei Adjektiven

Es gibt zwei Sorten von Adjektivreihungen: gleichwertige und ungleichwertige. Gleichwertige Adjektive sind solche, die unabhängig voneinander verwendet werden können. Keines bildet mit dem Substantiv ...
Jan's user avatar
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10 votes
Accepted

"Es ist schön hier." What are the differences when changing only the word order

The difference is not in meaning, but in emphasis. Schön ist es hier = "Wow, nice place!" This emphasizes the pleasantness of the place as opposed to other qualities, such as expensiveness of a ...
Kilian Foth's user avatar
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10 votes
Accepted

Where should I use "bitte" in imperative sentences?

(1) Bitte mach das Fenster zu! / Bitte füll das Formular aus! (2) Mach bitte das Fenster zu! / Füll bitte das Formular aus! (3) Mach das Fenster bitte zu! / Füll das Formular bitte aus! All are ...
Pollitzer's user avatar
  • 16k
10 votes

Order of locations?

Same order. Usually one would not include the state, like "Heidelberg, Germany", because we don't have that many city names that exist multiple times. But if they do, you would write it in brackets: ...
RoyPJ's user avatar
  • 2,236
10 votes

Order of locations?

The short answer is: other than in the USA, where it is common to add to names of towns and other inhabited places an abbreviation to indicate the federal state, e.g. Milan (OH) Paris (MS) Stuttgart (...
Christian Geiselmann's user avatar
10 votes
Accepted

The order of dative and accusative in a sentence

You already stated the rule: The dative object precedes the accusative object (not subject), except if the accusative object is a personal pronoun. In this case the pronoun goes first. So: Ich ...
RHa's user avatar
  • 15.5k
10 votes
Accepted

Werden untergeordnete Nebensätze seltener?

Die Beispiele können nicht einheitlich betrachtet werden. Es handelt sich um ganz unterschiedliche Erscheinungen. Beispiel 1 enthält nach meiner Ansicht nicht einmal einen Nebensatz. Beispiel 1: Es ...
johnl's user avatar
  • 7,698
10 votes
Accepted

"klopfte jemand" or "jemand klopfte"?

The first one is grammatical, the second one is an error often committed by native speakers of English because they translate word by word. But German main clauses don't have invariant word order, ...
Kilian Foth's user avatar
  • 14.8k
10 votes
Accepted

Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung

As in English, there are multiple ways to express the genitive: Das Haus des Nachbarn The house of the neighbour compared to Nachbars Haus (The) neighbor's house To keep the article with the ...
Henning Kockerbeck's user avatar
10 votes
Accepted

Why is the word order in this sentence other than expected?

The anwer guidot gave, already stated that “there is no single word order in German”, and that's why it is so important that the flexion endings clarify the relation. The emphasis part seems not quite ...
Wolf's user avatar
  • 1,573
10 votes
Accepted

Difference between two possibilities for a warning label

You can say Nur bei Fahrzeugstillstand zurücksetzen. Personally I would prefer Nicht während der Fahrt zurücksetzen. This is not a literal translation, but it says that the tripmeter must not be ...
Paul Frost's user avatar
  • 10.4k
10 votes
Accepted

What does "her" at the end of a sentence mean?

Duden has her sein as a multiword expression, which indicates that the combination is idiomatic, i.e. not derivable from general rules alone. Her combines with a temporal accusative or lang(e) to form ...
David Vogt's user avatar
  • 25.5k
10 votes

Is the sentence "Er trifft seine Mitbewohner im Café jeden Tag" wrong ? Why?

I was taught that the default order is "time, manner, place", so jeden Tag comes before im Cafe. A good example of all three in one sentence is Ich fahre morgen mit dem Bus ins Cafe
RuthMcT's user avatar
  • 101
9 votes
Accepted

How to use "weil" properly

Both cojunctions deshalb and weil are used to initiate a causal clause: Ich bin müde, weil ich nicht genug geschlafen habe. Ich habe nicht genug geschlafen, deshalb bin ich müde. In these ...
Takkat's user avatar
  • 70.2k
9 votes

Where does "gern" go in a sentence with a timephrase at the start?

"Nach der Schule spiele ich gern Fußball." Note: no comma there. "am liebsten" can be used instead of "gern" without any other changes.
Hans-Martin Mosner's user avatar

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