is the german sentence structure like english sentence structures?

Answer 1

In Linguistics, West-European languages are usually classified as having one of two types of underlying sentence structures. They can be mainly Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) languages, of which English is one, or Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) languages, of which German is one. So the main difference between the two is that English has an underlying SVO word order, while German has an underlying SOV word order.

Eg
English: John (S) eats (V) apples (O)
German: Johann (S) isst (V) Aepfel (O)

In simple clause declarative sentences German also has SVO word order.

However, in German when you have a subordinating conjunction or a relative clause in the sentence, the word order will change, the verb will go to the end and German shows its underlying SOV structure:

English: John (S) felt (V) sick ("O") - (subordinating conjunction) when - he (S) ate (V) too many apples (O). [Notice English has SVO-SVO.]

German: Johann (S) fuehlte (V) sich krank (O) - (sub. conj.) als - er (S) zuviele Aepfel (O) as (V).

Notice German has SVO-SOV.

Relative clauses have the same thing happening:

English: My closest friend (S) {who (S) rings (V) me (O) everyday} had (V) an accident (O) today.
S{SVO}VO
The relative clause {SVO} is embedded in the sentence, and we have overall underlying SVO structure.


German: Mein naehester Freund (S) {der (S) mich (O) jeden Tag anruft (V)} hatte (V) heute einen Unfall (O)

S{SOV}VO
The relative clause {SOV} is embedded in the sentence and we see an underlying SOV structure.

German also has VSO order such as in "Leider, komme (V) ich (S) nicht mit dir (O)."
[Unfortunately, I (S) won't be coming (V) with you (O).]

And also OSV:
Der Mann (S), {den (O) ich (S) kenne (V)}.

[The man (S), {whom (O) I (S) know (V)}.

Notice English there also has S{OSV} order. This is the only variation allowed in English. However S-V order is always preserved leading some linguists to say English has an underlying S-V word order structure.

Answer 2

German Sentence Structure

Answer 3

German, like Latin, uses a case noun system. In addition to the Nominative and Genitive (all Germanic languages, including English, have those) German has an Accusative case and a Dative case. Also, in German, unconjugated verbs go at the end of a sentence. For example: English: Can I have ________? German: Kann ich _______ haben? Yeah... German is a very hard language to learn. Some things are very similar to English (placement of pronouns, vocabulary, sounds, changing word order to indicate question, etc.), but there are more difficulties (3 grammatical genders, noun cases, slightly different sentence structure, etc.) that make learning German quite the task.

Answer 4

No, it is quite different, except in very simple sentences.
One of the main difficulties for learners is that German uses inversion (verb before noun/pronoun) in any sentence that is not started with its subject.
There is also the rule that the verb goes to the end of every dependent subclause.
The best thing for learners is to memorize the German sentence in a word by word translation to get accustomed to the weirdness of it.

Answer 5

"The best thing for learners is to memorize the German sentence in a word by word translation to get accustomed to the weirdness of it."

Umm...ethnocentrism much? There is absolutely nothing weird about the sentence structure in German. It's not like English is logical, correct and makes sense, while every other language of the world does things weird and "wrong".

Answer 6

I don't think so. German puts the verbs at the end when it uses modals and to give reasons with "weil" (because) and in some sentences puts the verb in first place before pronouns because it is considered more important in the sentence.

Answer 7

The verb is usually at the end of the sentence.

Answer 8

I have to agree with the others, it's not exactly the same. On the other hand, it could be worse. A simple sentence looks very similar.

Er geht nach Hause.

He goes to home. (He's going home)


When the sentences get more complex, it goes wrong.

Er ist nach Hause gegangen.

He's to home gone. (He went home)

Er geht nach Hause, weil er krank ist.

He goes to home, because he ill is. (He goes home because he's ill.)

Morgen geht er nach Hause.

Tomorrow goes he to home. (He goes home tomorrow)

Er mochte ins Kino gehen.

He 'd like in the cinema go. (He'd like to go to the cinema)