German Word Order and Sentence Structure Part 1

We have put together this quick reference guide to help you understand the word order in typical German sentences. This is one of the biggest aspects to learning German and one of the first challenges to get your mind round. Practice makes perfect and soon the word order will be natural to you but in the meantime use this reference guide to help keep on top of it.

Sentences with a subject, object and one verb:

Here the subject (S) of the sentence comes first followed by the verb (V) with the object (O) at the end.

E.G. Dein Vater (S) spielt (V) Fußball (O) – Your father plays football.

E.G. Dein Vater hat Fußball gespielt – Your father has played football.

Sentences with a subject, an indirect object, direct object and one verb:

Here the subject (S) of the sentence comes first, followed by the verb (V), then the indirect object (IO) and finally the direct object (DO)

E.G. Ich (S) gab (V) der Frau (IO) den Apfel (DO) – I gave the woman the apple

Er (S) gab (V) den Leuten (IO) Geld (DO) – He gave the people money

Two exceptions to this is when the direct object part of the sentence is a personal pronoun (e.g. Ich, du, es, mich, dich etc.) or when you want to put extra emphasis on the indirect object. When this happens the direct object comes first, followed by the indirect object.

E.G. Ich gab es (DO) ihr (IO) – I gave it to her

Ich gab den Apfel (DO) der Frau (IO) – I gave the apple to the woman (e.g. emphasising it is der Frau and not dem Mann)

Adverbs

Generally speaking, adverbs are normally placed next the words they are referring to. There are 3 types of adverbs, TIME adverbs, MANNER adverbs and PLACE adverbs.

Adverbs of TIME often go at the beginning of the sentence, although this is not a definitive rule.

E.G. Gestern ging ich ins Kino – Yesterday i went to the cinema

OR

Ich ging gestern ins Kino – I went to the cinema yesterday

Adverbs of MANNER comment on verbs so it is most common for these to come directly after the verb.

E.G. Sie spielen gut Tennis – they play tennis well

Adverbs of PLACE often come first in the sentence when you wish to emphasise something.

E.G. Dort spielen wir Tennis – That’s where we play tennis

If a sentence contains more than 1 adverb there is a general rule for the order they come in. This is the TIME, MANNER, PLACE rule. It’s pretty self explanatory as that is the order they are placed within the sentence.

E.G. Wir haben gestern gut hierhin gefunden – We found our way here all right yesterday

German Word Order and Sentence Structure Part 2 will be coming soon…

Learn Intermediate German with our Double Translate animations.