Subordinate clauses (Nebensätze) are dependent clauses that provide additional information and cannot stand alone. They are an essential part of German sentence structure and are used to express reasons, conditions, time relations, purposes, results, descriptions, and reported speech. Structurally, subordinate clauses are defined by verb-final word order and their integration into a main clause.
In this overview, you will learn:
what subordinate clauses are and how they differ from main clauses
which structural features all subordinate clauses share
how subordinate clauses are classified by function
how subordinate clauses fit into complex sentence structures
This overview helps English-speaking learners understand subordinate clauses as a coherent system rather than a collection of isolated rules.