Tag Archives: main clauses
Comma rules: How to linking main clauses in German Posted by Sandra Rösner on Aug 28, 2013
The comma is one of several punctuation characters. It serves to separate related thoughts or ideas within complex statements. Grammarians call such related thoughts or ideas clauses. German comma rules vary from English ones. Therefore, we should have a closer look at them. There are two basic sentence types in German, which you may already…
German word order: Main clauses, part 2 Posted by Sandra Rösner on Sep 22, 2012
In my last post, I explained how to form main clauses with only one verb and with the correct word order in mind. Today, I would to continue with this topic and address myself to sentences that contain two or three verbs. When a sentence contains only one verb, then this verb is usually a…
German word order: Main clauses, part 1 Posted by Sandra Rösner on Sep 20, 2012
Unlike English, German word order is not that consistent. The position of the verb depends on the sentence type. In main clauses, the verb comes after the subject. In subordinate clause, the verb comes at the end of the sentence, and in questions and imperatives, the verb comes in the first position. Here are some…
Mastering German word order II: main clauses Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jul 22, 2010
In my previous post, I explained the word order of a basic German sentence, containing the following grammatical entities: S = subject: ich (I) V = verb: schreibe (am writing) O = object: einen Brief (a letter) T = time: heute (today) L = location: im Büro (at the office) My example sentence was: Ich…
Mastering German word order I: main clauses Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jul 13, 2010
German word order may appear to be very random and confusing for foreign learners. Thus, I want to try to help you to overcome this challenge. To make it as easy as possible for you to follow my explanation, I am going to start with the easiest and most basic sentence structure (containing less information)…