When I was learning German I never really got the concept of main (Hauptsatz) and dependent clauses (Nebensatz) and to be honest it is still difficult for me at times to figure out which information is the main one just by its sense. What I have realized though was, that to create a correct sentence one doesn't actually have to understand the concept of "main" and "subordinated" information at all. Look at these examples:
- Er ist müde, weil er früh aufgestanden ist. He's tired because he got up early.
- Wenn er nicht früh aufgestanden wäre, wäre er nicht müde. If he had not gotten up early, he wouldn't be tired.
Is the fact, that he is tired, more important than the information that he has gotten up early? Well, again, it doesn't really matter (to build a correct sentence). But you can see the highlighted words in red. These introduce a dependent clause and are called subjunctions or at times conjunctions. At sG we simply call them "pushers" as they have one job and that is to "push" the nearest verb to the end.
The good news is that you have already worked with pushers since the beginning of this course. Remember your preachings with "weil" and "wenn" or "dass"? Those were all pusher clauses. There is not really much new to learn here. But it doesn't harm to review certain topics every once in a while. So let's take a closer look at the two examples above:
While example 1 is quite straight forward, example 2 can cause quite some confusion. The first half seems fine, the pusher "wenn" is pushing "wäre" to the end of that sentence. But then after the comma, we immediately have the verb of the 2nd sentence. That's something to keep in mind but don't worry, you'll practice that with help of some of the upcoming preaching lessons. For now it suffices to notice this little twist.
All Relevant Pushers
There are several pushers. I'll provide you with a complete list below but please DO NOT learn these by heart. Learning any kind of list by heart is a colossal waste of time and brain space. This course will make you familiar with each of them step by step. Actually you have been using pushers like "weil" already for a while. But it is always good to have a quick overview. Hence, here they are:
- dass - that
- ob - whether / obwohl - although
- weil - because
- damit - so that
- um... zu - in order to
- wenn - when (present) / if
- als - when (past)
- Relative pronouns: der Mann, der... the man, who...
- question words in indirect questions,
e.g.: Ich weiß nicht, wo du wohnst. I don't know where you live.
Other examples will be covered in detail in the lesson about the indirect speech later in this course but as a primer here a few examples:
A: Ich weiß nicht, wer Sie sind.
B: Ich weiß nicht, wann ich frei bin.
C: Ich weiß nicht, woher das kommt.
D: Ich weiß nicht, wohin wir fahren.
E: Ich weiß nicht, warum du mich das fragst
This topic is covered in: A2-L21