Wortstellung

German word order can be flexible, but there are some rules. You can often move things to the beginning of the sentence in order to place emphasis on it. You will often see this with dates and times, but you can also do this with locations and other terms.

1	2	3	4
Ich	beobachte	Menschen	im Prater.
Im Prater	beobachte	ich	Menschen.

 

Notice what happens when you move “im Prater” to the beginning of the sentence. “Im Prater” is a full phrase, so we treat it as a unit.  That means it moves to the first position in the sentence. The verb stays in the second position, and the subject comes right after the verb.

Achtung!
You’re going to be tempted to put a comma after “im Prater” because that’s what we do in English. Don’t do it!!

Just because it’s at the beginning of the sentence, doesn’t mean that it is offset by a comma. You will learn more about comma rules later, but just keep this one in mind for now.

 

 

Was soll man sehen?

For this writing activity, you’re going to plan a trip, but you have options.

You’ve learned a lot about Vienna, so you can plan a trip to Vienna, or you choose to talk about a city in your country and describe what German speakers should do there. Either way, use the following questions to guide your plans.

 

• Decide what attractions you want to see: Museen, Kirchen, Kaffeehäuser, usw…
• Describe what you want to see in the city or what one must see.
• Find these attractions on a map and figure out how to get there.

 

Remember to use the vocabulary below as well as the prepositions with dative to explain what you can do there and where they are located.

Nouns

der Bezirk, -e
das Café, -s
die Donau
der Dom, -e
der Fluss, -¨e
der Heurige, -n
das Kaffeehaus, -¨er
die Kirche, -n
das Museum, die Museen
das Museumsquartier
der Naschmarkt, -¨e
die Oper, -n
der Park, -s
das Rathaus, -¨er
das Restaurant, -s
das Riesenrad, -¨er
das Schloss, -¨er
die Secession
das Theater, –

das Volkstheater, –

der Tiergarten, -¨

Verbs

anschauen
besichtigen
besuchen
finden
liegen
stehen

Other Useful Words & Phrases

man

2-Way Prepositions

an
auf
hinter
in
neben
über
unter
vor
zwischen