German Clauses: the Basics

A clause is a group of words with a subject and a verb that relate to one another. A sentence can have just one clause, or several of them. There are numerous ways to combine different types of clauses in German – but to do that, you first need to learn the basics.

Main Clauses

Rule 1: The statement sentence or main clause (also called an independent clause) has a full stop at the end and is the most common German sentence. It is grammatically complete, can stand alone, and has meaning. They can have as minimum as a subject, a verb, and an object:

...or be more elaborated:

Rule 2: Independent clauses can be part of complex and compound sentences when used with other independent or dependent clauses. We will learn more about different types of German dependent clauses in A2 level.

Connecting Sentences

Rule 3: Conjunctions are words that connect clauses. There are 3 types of connectors:

- Coordinative conjunctions (i.e. "und", "aber", ...) are simple and do not change the word order. They are often used in either simple sentences to connect words or in complex sentences that include two or more independent clauses.
- Subordinate conjunctions (i.e. "als", "damit", "bevor", "bis", "weil") which push the verb to the end of the clause. They are used in complex or compound sentences with dependent clauses.
- Compound conjunctions (i.e. "entweder...oder" as either/or, "sowohl...als auch" as as well as) can join two independent expressions into one sentence.

Let's take a closer look at the basic coordinating conjunctions:

Coordinating Conjunctions

Rule 4: A coordinating conjunction connects two sentences or words. The conjunction is always put between two sentences and thus is not a part of them:

As mentioned, coordinating conjunctions don’t disturb the word order of the German sentence.

The most common coordinating conjunctions are:

Rule 5: If the verb and/or subject is the same in both main clauses, they can be omitted in the second one:

instead of: