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 ...
- 15.5k
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 ...
- 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 ...
- 15.5k
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).
"...
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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. ...
- 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 ...
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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 ...
- 18.3k
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 ...
- 18.3k
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 ...
- 57.4k
12
votes
Accepted
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. ...
- 57.4k
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 ...
- 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 ...
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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 ...
- 57.4k
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 ...
- 38.6k
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 ...
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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 ...
- 38.6k
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 ...
- 14.8k
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 ...
- 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:
...
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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 (...
- 31.1k
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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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, ...
- 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 ...
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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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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
- 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 ...
- 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.
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