German

Conjunctions

Conjunctions are words that link two or
more words, clauses, phrases or
sentences. In German, they belong to the
group of non-declinable words. However,
in German you will often find several
posibilities to choose from to denote one
single English conjunction. Such is the
case with aber and sondern. For instance,
consider the following sentences in
English:

The child didn't want to go home, but to
the park.

She is exhausted, but doesn't want to go
to sleep.

They would be translated as follows:

Das Kind will nicht nach Hause gehen,

sondern zum Park.
Sie ist erschpft, aber will nicht schlafen
gehen.

As you can see, both aber and sondern
mean but in English. How do you know
which "but" conjunction to use? It is
actually quite simple:

Aber, which means but, however,
nevertheless is used after either a
positive or negatice clause.
On the other hand, sondern is only used
after a negative clause when expressing a
contradiction. In other words, the first
clause of the sentence must contain either
nicht or kein, and the second part of the
sentence must contradict the first part of
the sentence. Sondern can be translated
as but, on the contrary, instead, but
rather. Below is the list of conjunctions.

 als - as
bevor - before
bis - until
da - since
damit - in order that
dass - that
ehe - ere
falls - in case
indem - while
nachdem - after
ob - whether
obgleich - although
obschon - although
obwohl - although
seit - since
sodass - so that
solang - so long as
trotzdem - in spite the fact
weil - because
wenn - whenever
whrend - whereas