Constructing sentences

German word order is different from English in a fundamental way, but that doesn’t really become apparent until we get to making slightly more complicated sentences.

For now, we can see that simple sentences look very much like their English counterparts.

Das Wasser ist tief.
The water is deep.

Die Autos sind neu.
The cars are new.

Wo sind meine Schlüssel?
Where are my keys?

Wort für Wort identisch.
Word-for-word identical.

As soon as we add an adverb, the word order changes slightly. German is called a “verb-second” language, meaning that the verb needs to take the second semantic slot in the sentence.

That doesn’t mean the second word, just the second place when the sentence is broken down into its elements.

Leider ist die Wortstellung hier ein bisschen anders.
Unfortunately the word order here is a little different.

Und auch hier findet man einen Unterschied.
And one finds a difference here as well.