Friday, May 18, 2012

German Grammar - Making Sense of German Sentences

I'd like to help you make some sense of German grammar, so your German reading practice will start to go a little smoother. If you are a beginner or even intermediate in German, and you want to improve your German language skills through reading, sooner or later, if you experience reading German in anyway like I have, you will get hung up some . At this point you may ask yourself, "why learn German"? and contemplate giving up on the German language. Just hang in there - help is on the way!

Let me help you in the next few posts with typical difficult German sentences. I've figured out some tricks to learning German over the years after banging my head on difficult, long sentences enough, so maybe I can spare you a little grief.

We are going to make sense out of a sentence (which I got from my World War 2 reading:

  • Der für ein erneutes Minenunternehmen vorgesehene Tanker "British Emperor" erkannte im nördlichen Indik den Hilfskreuzer and funkte. Er wurde daher beschossen und versenkt.


The trick is to break the sentence down into its elementary parts:

  1. Subject (Nominative case): Der Tanker "British Emperor"

  2. Verb: Two verbs here - erkannte and funkte

  3. Object of the verb (Accusative case) den Hilfskreuzer - object of erkannte

  4. Adjective describing Subject: für ein erneutes Minenunternehmen vorgesehene *This is where I used to get stuck. This is how it works - If you look up vorsehen, it is a verb meaning to have intentions or plans for something, but here it is used as an adjective - its called a verbal adjective. "vorgesehene" is in the past participle form - its subject is Tanker. Have plans for what? - für ein erneutes Minenunternehmen - for a new mine-laying operation. In English it sounds literally like: The for a new mine-laying operation planned Tanker "British Emperor" or, to make it sound better in English - The Tanker "British Emperor" is planned for a new mine-laying operation.

  5. Adverb: im nördlichen Indik - the action is taking place in the northern Indian Ocean.

  6. Break down the sentence to its basic ingredients. Once you understand what is the subject, verb, direct object and indirect object, then add back the extra seasoning!

  7. This is the broken down sentence: Der vorgesehene Tanker "British Emperor" erkannte den Hilfskreuzer und funkte.

  8. Add back the extra seasoning: für ein erneutes Minenunternehmen, im nördlichen Indik


Now we just figured out this sentence. We won't go over the second sentence for now. Can anyone tell me what both sentences mean together and what just happened in this sea action?

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