Barry Posted August 28, 2018 Report Share Posted August 28, 2018 I've been using FluentU and one of the videos included a line in a song - "Im Dezember man Sterne sehen kann." https://youtu.be/v5Nzm6TvF_Y?t=2m12s Is this word order correct? If so, what's going on with it? I thought a verb needs to come as the second 'group' in the sentence then the rest of the verbs stack at the end of the sentence. "Im Dezember man Sterne" seems too big to be a single concept since it contains a time and two nouns. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linguaholic Posted August 28, 2018 Report Share Posted August 28, 2018 On 8/28/2018 at 12:16 AM, Barry said: I've been using FluentU and one of the videos included a line in a song - "Im Dezember man Sterne sehen kann." https://youtu.be/v5Nzm6TvF_Y?t=2m12s Is this word order correct? If so, what's going on with it? I thought a verb needs to come as the second 'group' in the sentence then the rest of the verbs stack at the end of the sentence. "Im Dezember man Sterne" seems too big to be a single concept since it contains a time and two nouns. Expand Hey Barry. Welcome to Linguaholic.com! You are right, it is wrong. It should say "Im Dezember kann man Sterne sehen" or something like "Im Dezember ist es möglich, Sterne am Himmel zu sehen." But then again, it is a song. Often in songs, word order gets a little bit mixed up. But it definitely does not sound nice like that. And after all, it is wrong. That is true. (I can't listen to the song right now. I will listen to it later on. Maybe the context gives this particular sentence a little bit more sense. I highly doubt it, though. As I can't imagine a context where this actual sentence structure would truly make sense) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barry Posted August 28, 2018 Author Report Share Posted August 28, 2018 Thanks for your reply. It seems like that part of FluentU is concentrating on building vocab, but throwing in incorrect grammar just to confuse everything! I had another completely different query, but it seems a bit unnecessary to start a new topic. "Man kann ja nie wissen" - Why is there a "ja" in the middle? I've asked two German speakers and the answer I've been given is that in this context "ja" is more of a sound than a word, but it still confuses me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linguaholic Posted August 29, 2018 Report Share Posted August 29, 2018 On 8/28/2018 at 9:57 PM, Barry said: Thanks for your reply. It seems like that part of FluentU is concentrating on building vocab, but throwing in incorrect grammar just to confuse everything! I had another completely different query, but it seems a bit unnecessary to start a new topic. "Man kann ja nie wissen" - Why is there a "ja" in the middle? I've asked two German speakers and the answer I've been given is that in this context "ja" is more of a sound than a word, but it still confuses me. Expand 6 Well in my opinion, the word "ja" here just adds to the intensity of the actual expression. The word "ja" here does not have a semantic value. That is how I see it here. If you would just say "Man kan nie wissen", the meaning would exactly the same. At least 99% the same :=) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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