In my previous post, I explained the word order of a basic German sentence, containing the following grammatical entities:

S = subject: ich (I)

V = verb: schreibe (am writing)

O = object: einen Brief (a letter)

T = time: heute (today)

L = location: im Büro (at the office)

My example sentence was:

Ich schreibe einen Brief. (S+V+O) – I am writing a letter.

To where I added the information about the TIME and LOCATION of my action:

Ich schreibe heute einen Brief im Büro. (S+V+T+O+L) – Today I am writing a letter at the office.

In this post I am going to explain what I have to do when I want to attach the TIME or LOCATION of my action at the beginning of a sentence.

When doing this, I have to make sure to execute some word shift. That is, I have to interchange the subject and the verb. So, the word order is no longer subject + verb (ich schreibe) but becomes verb + subject (schreibe ich). Compare:

Ich schreibe heute einen Brief im Büro. (S+V+T+O+L)

and

Heute schreibe ich einen Brief im Büro. (T+V+S+O+L)

In German we call this “versetzte Wortreihenfolge” (SHIFTED WORD ORDER). Unfortunately, I cannot give a logical explanation why we interchange the subject and verb here, but it would just sound odd if we didn’t do it.

I can also add the LOCATION at the beginning of my sentence, which asks for the word shift, too. Compare:

Ich schreibe heute einen Brief im Büro. (S+V+T+O+L)

and

Im Büro schreibe ich heute einen Brief. (L+V+S+T+O)

All you have to do is to bring the TIME or LOCATION at the beginning of the sentence, execute the word shift (S+V becomes V+S) and the rest of the sentence remains unchanged.

Here is the key of my last post’s exercise:

  1. Sie liest heute Abend ein Buch in der Bibliothek. (Sie liest heute Abend in der Bibliothek ein Buch.) – Tonight she is reading a book in the library.
  2. Er trinkt morgens eine Tasse Kaffee im Garten. (Er trinkt morgens im Garten eine Tasse Kaffee.) – In the morning he is drinking a cup of coffee in the garden.
  3. Sie kaufen freitags Lebensmittel im Supermarkt. (Sie kaufen freitags im Supermarkt Lebensmittel.) – On Fridays they are buying groceries in the supermarket.

If you like, you can apply the rule I have just explained to these sentences in order to exercise the construction of German sentences.