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German: Making sense of word order. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| spanishlearner Groupie France Joined 5453 days ago 51 posts - 81 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 9 of 33 10 March 2010 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What about the following sentence:
Na ja, aber morgen habe ich viel Arbeit. You'd have to create negative positions for that. I find it easier to qualitatively regard the whole of it as one unit. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| spanishlearner Groupie France Joined 5453 days ago 51 posts - 81 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 10 of 33 10 March 2010 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
That is correct. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 11 of 33 10 March 2010 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes. For verbs the rules are decidedly simple:
1. In the main clause, the first verb always comes in second position. That is, no matter what comes first (the subject, another word, a word group, a subclause,...), the verb can't move any further in the sentence, it has to come immediately after. It can't wait for the subject like in English, that is. 2. The second and third and any other verbs always pile up at the end. 3. In a subclause, all verbs pile up at the end. Example: Wenn ich heute das Essen gekocht habe, werde ich sofort zum Amt gehen müssen, um meinen Führerschein zu erneuern. Translation: When I [will] have cooked the meal today, I will have to go to the office immediately in order to renew my driver's license. Literal: When I today the meal cooked have, will I immediately to the office go must, in order my driver's license to renew. Easy, isn't it? ;-) 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| spanishlearner Groupie France Joined 5453 days ago 51 posts - 81 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 12 of 33 10 March 2010 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, after having read and listened such sentences a few thousand times. :) For German grammar, I wholeheartedly recommend Michel Thomas' course. It is fantastic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| arkady Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States rightconditi Joined 5399 days ago 54 posts - 61 votes Speaks: English*, Russian* Studies: German | Message 13 of 33 10 March 2010 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That is quite simple indeed! This in fact explains all the sentences that I have heard between both Assimil and Pimsleur to this day.
Question in your example. werde ich sofort zum Amt gehen müssen, what is 'müssen'? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| arkady Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States rightconditi Joined 5399 days ago 54 posts - 61 votes Speaks: English*, Russian* Studies: German | Message 14 of 33 10 March 2010 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Which MT German course have you used/do you recommend? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 15 of 33 10 March 2010 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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ah HA! I got it! German is a V2 language (I couldn't remember the term)!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V2_word_order 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 16 of 33 10 March 2010 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
müssen = must. Look at the literal translation, where I translated every word in the order it appeared in the German sentence. In the non-literal English I translated "müssen" as "have to" because "will must" doesn't exist. English modal verbs are strange like that. Note that there's another difference between German and English when it comes to negative use of the modal verbs. Du musst das tun. = You must do that. You have to do that. Du musst das nicht tun. = You don't need to do that, it is not necessary for you to do that. Du darfst das tun. = You may do that. You are allowed to do that. Du darfst das nicht tun. = You mustn't do that, it is forbidden that you do that. können stays the same. Edited by Sprachprofi on 10 March 2010 at 8:09pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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