Using Time
Phrases in Sentences
# A. C. Balaam #
Index On to the first exercise …
Here is a basic
sentence in German:
Ich spiele Fußball.
If we look at the
sentence grammatically, we see that the verb is what we call the “second idea”
in the sentence. The first idea is the word “ich”, and the verb is therefore
second. In a standard German sentence, the verb is always the second idea. (See
below)
The sentence is
short and very simple and we might want to add further information to it, such
as when we do the activity.
In German, there
are two ways to add a time phrase
into a sentence. German is very specific about word order, so we need to be
careful and think carefully about what happens and why.
Firstly we can put the time phrase into the middle
of the sentence. In this case, German prefers the time phrase to be as close to
the verb as possible.
Ich spiele um vier Uhr Fußball.
In our sentence,
we have now added a new element – the time phrase “um vier Uhr”. It is placed
into the sentence immediately after the verb “spiele”. The verb is the second
idea in the sentence, as we saw above.
A second example:
Ich
spiele am Samstag Fußball.
In this second
example, we have added the time phrase “am Samstag”, again immediately after
the verb, which is still the second idea.
If there is
another element in the sentence, the time phrase must come before it:
Ich
spiele am Samstag mit Harry Fußball.
Secondly
we
can place the time phrase at the beginning of the sentence. We mentioned above
the idea of the verb being the second idea in a standard German sentence. If we
now put a time phrase at the beginning of a sentence, the verb must still be
the second idea.
Watch what happens to the word order in the sentence:
Um vier Uhr spiele ich
Fußball.
Adding the time phrase to the beginning of the sentence means
that the verb and the subject word have to swap places so that the verb is
still the second idea in the sentence. We call this “inversion”.
Another
example:
Am Sonntag spielt mein Bruder Markus Tennis.
The exercises which follow give you practice at German word
order. Make sure you read the instructions to each one carefully, as they give
you important information regarding how to begin the sentence, and remember
that the verb must always be the SECOND idea in the sentence.