Word Order (Satzstellung)

The payoff of everything you've learned about cases: German can rearrange a sentence, and you'll still know who did what to whom.

The one unbreakable rule: verb in position 2

In a German main clause (a statement, not a question), the conjugated verb is always the second element. Not necessarily the second word — the second grammatical unit. Position 1 can be filled by the subject, but it doesn't have to be. It can just as easily be a time expression, a place, or an entire object — anything. Whatever fills position 1, the verb stays glued to position 2, and if the subject isn't in position 1, it simply moves to position 3, right after the verb. This is called inversion, and it's completely normal, not an exception.

Ich fahre morgen nach Berlin.

I'm driving to Berlin tomorrow.

Subject first (the default, but not required): ich in position 1, fahre in position 2.

Morgen fahre ich nach Berlin.

Tomorrow I'm driving to Berlin.

Time expression first: morgen takes position 1, so fahre stays in position 2 and ich moves to position 3. The meaning barely changes — this just emphasizes "tomorrow."

Diesen Mann kenne ich nicht.

This man, I don't know.

The direct object leads. This is the payoff of learning cases: diesen Mann is unmistakably Akkusativ (der → den, plus the adjective ending), so there's no ambiguity about who knows whom, even though the object comes before the subject. Word order in German marks emphasis; case marks grammatical role.

Wenn es regnet, bleibe ich zu Hause.

If it rains, I stay home.

An entire subordinate clause can fill position 1 by itself. The main-clause verb bleibe still lands in position 2 — right after the comma — and the subject ich follows. See Conjunctions.

Why this is useful, not just a rule to memorize

In English, word order carries almost all the grammatical information: "The dog bites the man" and "The man bites the dog" mean opposite things, purely because of position. German doesn't have to rely on position for that — the case of each noun phrase (der/den/dem...) already says whether it's the subject or the object. That frees up position 1 for emphasis: whatever a German speaker puts first is what they want you to pay attention to, and you can always fall back on the case endings to work out who's doing what — even in a longer sentence with several ideas stacked up. This is exactly why the case pages on this site matter as much as they do.

Other time words that can lead a sentence the same way as "morgen": heute (today), später (later), bald (soon), zuerst (first) — and phrases with über (about) or für (for) work the same way when you want to emphasize them: "Über Geld spricht man nicht." (One doesn't talk about money.)

Subordinate clauses: verb to the end

This is covered in full on Conjunctions, but as a word-order rule on its own: a clause introduced by weil, dass, wenn, ob, or similar sends its conjugated verb to the very end of that clause — unlike the main clause, where the verb sits in position 2.

Ich bleibe zu Hause, weil ich krank bin.

I'm staying home because I'm sick.

Main clause: normal verb-second (bleibe). Subordinate clause (after "weil"): the verb bin moves to the very end.

TeKaMoLo — ordering time, cause, manner, place

When several adverbials pile up in the middle of a sentence (after the verb, before any object at the end), German has a default order, remembered with the acronym TeKaMoLo: Temporal (when?) → Kausal (why?) → Modal (how?) → Lokal (where?). You won't need all four at once very often, but when two or three show up together, this is the order native speakers expect.

Ich fahre morgen mit dem Auto nach Berlin.

I'm driving to Berlin tomorrow by car.

morgen (Temporal: when) → mit dem Auto (Modal: how) → nach Berlin (Lokal: where). No Kausal (why) element here, so it's simply skipped — the remaining three keep their relative order.

Wir bleiben heute wegen des Wetters zu Hause.

We're staying home today because of the weather.

heute (Temporal) → wegen des Wetters (Kausal: why) → zu Hause (Lokal). Modal is skipped this time.

Two objects: see Separable Verbs

When a sentence has both a Dativ and an Akkusativ object, there's a separate, reliable ordering rule (Dativ noun before Akkusativ noun; pronouns jump ahead of nouns). It's covered with a full set of examples on Separable Verbs — the rule applies to every verb, not just separable ones.

Word order in one line

Main clause: verb always position 2. Position 1 can be the subject or anything else you want to emphasize — the subject just moves to position 3 when it's not first. Subordinate clause (weil/dass/wenn/ob...): verb moves to the end. Multiple adverbials: TeKaMoLo — time, cause, manner, place.

Related

• Questions — how position 1 is emptied for W-questions and yes/no questions
• Conjunctions — coordinating vs. subordinating, and the verb-final trigger
• Negation (nicht & kein) — where nicht sits relative to the rest of the sentence
• Separable Verbs — the two-object ordering rule