Use conjunctions correctly in German
German grammar often has its pitfalls, even for native speakers. The many types of words in German can be confusing, and there is often a lack of basic grammatical knowledge in this regard. Find out what conjunctions are and how to use these parts of speech correctly.
Those who know grammatical terms and have a sound basic knowledge of the most important parts of speech in German can express themselves better orally and in writing. Conjunctions are particularly important in order to be able to form sentences correctly.
Conjunctions - the main features of this part of speech
- The simplest translation for the term "conjunction" is "connective word". Conjunctions connect parts of sentences or words with each other in a grammatically correct and meaningful way. At the same time, however, they also have a meaning in terms of content.
- They use it daily in the spoken and in the written language countless conjunctions. The most common are "and", "or", "because", "that", "as", "by", "if" and "though". There are a total of about 350 connective words in German.
- Conjunctions are inflexible and never change. They always stay the same in form and spelling.
How to use conjunctions correctly in German
If you want to use conjunctions grammatically correctly, you must first become familiar with the meaning of the individual connective words.
The German language is characterized by its many, sometimes very fascinating ...
- The conjunction "and" belongs to the classifying conjunctions. You can use this word to connect two sentences or parts of sentences or to clarify a list. Example: "I feel tired and sick". Usually there is no comma in front of the conjunction "and".
- Subordinate conjunctions, on the other hand, always combine a main clause and a subordinate clause.
- The conjunctions “but” and “because” express a contradiction.
- The words "as", "if" and "how", however, are used when making a linguistic comparison.
- With "because", "namely", "that" and "because", however, you introduce a subordinate clause with an explanation. Example: "I got sick because I wasn't dressed warm enough yesterday."
- You have to put a comma before subordinate conjunctions in the written language.
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