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Herzlich willkommen zu Coffee Break German.

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Welcome to the Coffee Break German Show.

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Ich bin Marc. Ich heiße Thomas. Wie

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geht's dir, Thomas? Sehr gut, danke. Wie geht's

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dir? Sehr, sehr gut. We are here

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with a brand new concept, the

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Coffee Break German Show. And in these weekly

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episodes, we're going to be helping you take your German

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to the next level, one coffee break at a time. And

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if you're seeing this video on YouTube,

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please remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel

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or if you're actually listening to it on

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one of the many podcast platforms, also

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remember to subscribe to this podcast.

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Also Thomas, was lernen wir heute?

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What are we learning today? We are looking

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at our favorite topic when it comes to learning German

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and that is word order in a sentence.

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Ausgezeichnet. And to be precise,

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we're looking at when we have two verbs in

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a sentence, where do they go, what do they do?

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To be precise, you would have used und zwar

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there in German, wouldn't you? Ja, sehr

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gutes Beispiel. Einer meiner Lieblingsworte.

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Let's get on with the show.

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So tell us about word order

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in German. So I

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think there's a lot of topics you can, you

1:13

come across when it comes to word order. Today, I really

1:15

want to focus on having an auxiliary

1:17

verb

1:18

and a main verb. Right. And

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what happens, can you, can you think of examples

1:23

for auxiliary verbs? Yes, so we

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might be thinking of something like werden.

1:27

Ganz genau, when you're forming the future tense.

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Another one? Well,

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we have

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words like haben and sein,

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when they're auxiliary verbs using for

1:39

the perfect tense, for example. Perfekt gutes Beispiel,

1:41

ja, for forming perfect tense. And then also

1:43

all modal verbs. Of course. So all your

1:45

können, müssen, sollen. dürfen.

1:49

Genau, mögen. All of them. All of them. So

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word order when it comes to two verbs,

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basically in the sentence. Genau. And

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as I said, one is called auxiliary verb, which

1:58

is said.

1:59

And then the other one is the main verb and

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we see where do those two go in relation

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to each other and in the sentence. Okay, so I

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guess it makes sense to look at some examples. Yes

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and so I just have an easy example,

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straightforward sentences. Wir

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verden Morgen mit dem Bode

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nach Korsika fahren. I

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didn't know. How nice. We're off to

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Korsika. So, wir verden

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Morgen mit dem

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Bode nach Korsika

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fahren.

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So we've got wir verden

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and we said verden is often used to form

2:35

the future. So we will

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or we're going to and it was information,

2:40

fahren. And

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that's sometimes why it's really worth to jump at the

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end of a sentence to see what

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are we actually going to do because so far we only know

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we are going to something Korsika,

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something with a boat. But what is it? Yes,

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so fahren go or travel to. So

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we're going to travel tomorrow, Morgen,

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mit dem Bode with the boat

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or by boat, nach Korsika

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to Korsika and

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we're going to travel there. Okay,

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now so we are going to travel to Korsika

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tomorrow by boat. And

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as we saw here, we had our auxiliary verb at the

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start after our subject we and then our

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second verb went to the end of the

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whole sentence and it stayed in the infinitive.

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Yeah. So also if we would change the sentence, if

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we say like, I am going to, it would

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be ich verden, but we only need

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to change the verden. The fahren would stay the same

3:29

because it's an infinitive. That makes sense.

3:31

Good. So we have all

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of that information in between the auxiliary

3:36

verb verden and fahren

3:38

which is coming at the end. Okay, now. And

3:41

there's like a bit of an order there, isn't there? Okay,

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so you may remember in other episodes

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of Coffee Break German, we've talked about Te

3:57

Kaimolo. That's for another episode. I

4:00

don't think we're going to go through this. No, I think

4:02

otherwise we'll take it too long for now. Let's look

4:05

at another example then. Okay, maybe one

4:07

with a modal verb. So, du

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solst, nach dem esen, dine

4:11

hende wachen. Right, so here

4:13

we've got du solst. So the modal

4:16

verb is zollen. So,

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to ought to or something like that. Yeah. So

4:21

you should nach dem esen

4:23

after the meal, after eating. Yeah.

4:27

Dine hende, your hands, wachen,

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to wash. So you must

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wash your hands or you should wash your hands after

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a meal. It's the same order here. We have

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the modal verb in the second position

4:39

here or the soli verb and then our infinities at the very

4:41

end of the sentence. Okay, let's

4:44

do one more example. Mein

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färter hat gesten aund für

4:48

uns geckhort. Right,

4:51

so here we're seeing an example in the

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perfect tense. Okay, now you've

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probably already know our end verb. Our

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second verb at the end is a little bit different. It's not in the infinities

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this time. It would be the past participle

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here, you know. Because we're using haben

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geckhort, from the verb kochen, but

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geckhort. We have cooked. So

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mein färter, my father, hat gesten

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aund, has

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a yesterday evening für uns

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for us geckhort. So

5:21

my father cooked for us yesterday. And

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again, whenever you see those haben or sign,

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I think it's a very good idea if you want to

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translate a sentence, jump to the end. And

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then the rest of the sentence often makes

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a lot more sense because you know the context of the sentence. You know the second

5:35

verb. So jump

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back, see what they're actually talking about and

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then the rest falls into place. Everything falls into place. Very

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good. Okay, so

5:44

that is kind of straightforward

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examples when we're

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basically using two verbs together. But there are some

5:52

other situations which can have a role to

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play in there. Okay, now also the days you

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said there were really standard sentences

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was the subject, then well. auxiliary verb and

6:00

then the other at the end. Now that changes

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sometimes a little bit for example if you want

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to or if you look at how to negate

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the sentence. So if

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you look at the sentence, sie werden die

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zis spiel nicht gewenen. Right,

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so this is our next example, sie werden

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die zis spiel nicht gewenen. They

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are not going to win

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this game. Perfect,

6:25

yeah. But the nicht is just

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coming before the gewenen at the end. So

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if you have the auxiliary verb, main verb combination,

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you put your nicht before your main

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verb at the end. But sometimes I think if you

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have really long sentences, it makes a

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big difference in

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understanding if they're doing something

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or if you're not doing something because you have all that

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long sentences, people start thinking

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about, oh what is that and then in the end you have a nicht

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gewenen. And so just always

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be careful to pick up the nicht or the no

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nicht to see what they're talking about. Yeah,

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I always think about interpreters and when

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interpreters are interpreting from

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German into English for example and they

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have to wait right until the very end and obviously

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in a formal situation, in a conference or

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something like that, the sentences might be quite long. And

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you're waiting, you're waiting, you're waiting to find out

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what the final value is. If

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it's happening or if it's not happening. So

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that's with nicht. Are there

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other situations where we have to be careful? Yes,

7:25

something else and people have probably come across

7:27

this before is when you have like freeze

7:30

at the start. So either like a temporal freeze or

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an adverb and then you

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probably know what comes after that. Yeah,

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so when we start like if we're

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saying yesterday I cooked,

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it would be yesterday cooked I. So

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the verb always comes in the second position and it's

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the same if you have two words. For example,

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in the sentence, let's just see. Yeah,

7:55

okay. So let's just see. Mid

7:58

them out to in the. So

8:01

last year they traveled

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by car on holiday. They went on holiday

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by car. And as you just mentioned, just make

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sure the verb, even if it's an auxiliary verb, comes

8:12

at that second position and then the subject follows

8:15

afterwards. That makes sense. Okay. And

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there's one further thing that you want to pick up on here and that's

8:20

with subordinate clauses, isn't it? Yes. So

8:22

I don't want to go too much into the topic of subordinate

8:25

clauses, but just one thing is the verb,

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if you just have one verb, comes at the end

8:29

of a subordinate clause. Yes. And

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I wanted to have a look at what does that look like if we have

8:34

two verbs in a subordinate clause.

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So in this sentence,

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when do Morgan arbeiten

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must,

8:41

dan kenen wir auch wiebe Morgan

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schwimmen geen. Right. And

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a long sentence, but if we focus on the first

8:48

bit, which is our subordinate clause because

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we're starting with when, if, that

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was when do Morgan arbeiten

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must. Okay. So when

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do Morgan arbeiten must, if

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you tomorrow work,

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have to. So if you have to work tomorrow.

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Yes. And we see here that in

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every subordinate clause or if you

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just have one verb, it goes to the end and it's less

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confusing, but because we have two here, we

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just need to remember that our auxiliary

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verb, about the ones that we conjugate goes

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to the very end and therefore also

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behind our infinitive. So we have

9:24

arbeiten must and

9:26

then the subordinate clause is finished. That makes

9:28

sense. Okay. So just a little thing on the whole

9:31

idea of subordinate clauses, um, it's

9:33

kind of technical word and sometimes it can

9:35

be quite confusing for learners because certainly

9:38

as an English learner, I never really learned

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what a subordinate clause was in my whole life. I

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only learned all these words when I started actually preparing lessons.

9:48

So basically it's the

9:50

part of the sentence that doesn't really need to

9:52

be there because the second section, Dan

9:55

kern

9:55

wir auch über Morgan shreemgen, then we

9:57

can also go swimming tomorrow.

9:59

It would be a full sentence. We

10:02

could also go swimming tomorrow works

10:05

on its own, but this extra bit of

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information, this extra

10:09

element, is there subordinate clauses subordinate

10:12

to the main clause? Exactly,

10:14

and it couldn't stand by itself, so it always

10:16

needs the second. So let's

10:19

just go through this whole sentence again. So

10:22

if you have to work tomorrow,

10:24

then we could also go

10:27

swimming the day after tomorrow. Oh,

10:33

it's a nice word. And

10:36

then for that part it's back to normal, we have done,

10:38

then we have our verb, subject, and

10:41

then our verb at the very end again. Oh,

10:44

that's a good question. Okay, so let's

10:46

do a little bit of a recap of what we've

10:49

covered today. We've been talking about

10:51

how word order works in German,

10:54

particularly when we've got two verbs involved

10:56

in a sentence. In our example

10:59

we had these auxiliary verbs, and they are

11:02

the ones that we conjugate, that we change, and

11:06

they go at the second position in a normal

11:08

sentence, just as a sentence with

11:11

one verb. And then we saw that the

11:13

second verb, our infinitive

11:15

or past participle, always goes to the

11:17

very end, and therefore also said

11:19

it's worth checking the end of a sentence

11:21

if you come across words like wearden,

11:24

harben, sein, or any of the more verbs to

11:26

see what is actually happening and get the context of a

11:28

sentence. Okay, and we also look briefly

11:31

at what happens when something else is introduced,

11:33

like a nicht, or if we're changing

11:35

the order, starting with an

11:37

adverb, like let's just, yeah,

11:39

or something like that. Okay, now we saw with a

11:42

nicht, where we negate something, the nicht goes

11:44

in front, the final verb, so like basically

11:47

the second last position in the sentence, and

11:49

we also saw when we have let's just see

11:51

our guess, and like you said, we

11:53

just need to make sure that we follow the same order,

11:56

and with a normal sentence with one verb, and

11:58

that is that our verb goes in the second position. before

12:00

the subject. Yeah and finally we look

12:02

to what happens with subordinate clauses. Again

12:05

probably a video by itself but just

12:07

to make sure if you have a subordinate

12:10

clause or any sentence where the verb goes to the

12:12

end make sure you put actually the auxiliary

12:14

verb to the very end.

12:16

That means it's behind your infinitive

12:18

or your past participle. I think

12:20

that's probably enough for today. I feel like that's

12:23

enough. Ja, das glaub ich auch.

12:29

We hope that you've enjoyed this lesson

12:31

and if you'd like to see the written version of all of this content

12:33

then we've actually put together a blog article

12:35

explaining all of the aspects about word order

12:38

and all of the written examples in German are

12:40

included in that. So if you would like to get

12:42

access to that then the link is in the description.

12:45

You can visit that right now. Also

12:47

if you like more help with your German and

12:50

receive regular free email lessons

12:52

go to coffeebreaklanguages.com.

12:56

We send out regular email lessons as Thomas has

12:58

said and we cover vocabulary, grammar,

13:01

culture, everything. So

13:04

do check that out and you can look

13:07

out for the next mini lesson in your inbox

13:09

very soon if you sign up for that. Also das

13:11

reicht für heute. Das ist auch. I've already said.

13:13

Das glaub ich auch. Vielen Dank und

13:16

bis zum nächsten Mal. Happy Coffeebreaking.

13:30

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