German Grammar Explained /
The position of verbs in sentences
In German sentences, the position of the verb is extremely important.
The following are the three most frequent types of sentences. Observe the position of the verb in each:
1. Main clauses | Meine Schwester wohnt in Berlin. |
2. Yes/No-Questions | Hast du Kinder? |
3. W-Questions | Wo arbeitest du? |
You can't choose where to put the verb in German!
In a nutshell: Always put the verb in the second position and invert verb and subject to make yes/no-questions.
Make no mistake: in the sentence
Meine Schwester wohnt in Berlin.
My sister lives in Berlin
The verb is in the second position. The second position need not be the same as the second word. In the above sentence, Meine Schwester counts as one thing, or fills one position. It is the subject of the sentence.
German is a subject-verb-object (SVO) language, just like English!
Looking on the bright side, making questions in German is much easier than in English. There is no need to have extra helping words and the verb is always at the very beginning of the sentence.