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.

Two-Way Prepositions

 

 

Was soll man sehen?

Plan a short tour of Vienna.  Include the locations that you discussed in class with your classmates.  Write at least 6 sentences about 3 attractions.  One may be the one that you chose, but the other two should be the attractions that your classmates chose.  

Use the following example to guide your structure:

Stephanie will zum Stephansdom gehen.  Man kann in dem Stephansdom Musik hören.  Man muss eine Eintrittskarte kaufen.

Don’t forget to use, wollen, können, müssen, and sollen.  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