Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to identify prepositions and conjunctions as parts of speech and explain their basic function in a sentence.

Lesson Explanation

Prepositions show the relationship between a noun/pronoun and another word in the sentence — usually relationships of place, time, or direction: in, auf, unter, während, nach, mit, ohne (in, on, under, during, after, with, without). A genuinely important, German-specific detail: every preposition requires a specific grammatical case (accusative, dative, or genitive) — a system covered fully in Part 3, Lessons 5-6.

Conjunctions connect words, clauses, or sentence parts, and are divided into two functionally distinct categories that are crucial for word order — a topic central to Part 2 of this course.

Coordinating conjunctions — und, oder, aber, denn, sondern (and, or, but, for/because, but rather) — connect two equal main clauses WITHOUT changing the normal verb-second word order: Ich gehe, aber sie bleibt. (I’m going, but she’s staying — both clauses keep their normal word order).

Subordinating conjunctions — weil, dass, wenn, obwohl, während, bevor (because, that, if/when, although, while, before) — introduce a subordinate clause and genuinely change the word order decisively: the conjugated verb moves to the end of the clause (the verb-last rule): Ich bleibe zu Hause, weil es regnet. (I’m staying home because it’s raining — not “weil regnet es”) — this fundamental difference is covered in detail in Part 2, Lessons 3-4.

Practice Questions