Positions of verbs in clauses?

Question

e.g. when we use *wenn* the verb goes to end. If the sentence starts with *wenn*, the second clause starts with verb as follows: > **Wenn** es morgen **regnet**, **gehe** ich ins Kino. I think it is similar for *weil* and *als* too. But for *denn*, the verb doesn't go to the end, stays in second position. How can one know where to put verb for which conjunctions? What are the other conjunctions that follow this rule? Does second clause always start with verb?

Answer 1

Good question and well written!

This can seem pretty confusing but there actually is a (pretty) easy answer to this!

There are two types of conjunctions:

Subordinating Conjunctions: e.g. wenn, als, weil...

These require the verb to go to the end of the clause like in your example:

"Wenn es morgen regnet, gehe ich ins Kino"

and

Coordinating Conjunctions: e.g. denn, und, oder, aber...

These conjunctions do not affect the word order of the clause:

"Ich bleibe lieber zu Hause, denn es regnet morgen"

For a complete list of subordinating conjunctions (verb goes to the end) and coordinating conjunctions (verb in normal position), go here:

https://deutsch.lingolia.com/en/grammar/sentence-structure/dependent-clauses/conjunctions

to answer your second question : "Does second clause always start with a verb?"

First of all, coordinating conjunctions like "denn" tend to come in the second clause, so the question wouldn't actually apply to it. But as you can see in your first sentence:

"Wenn es morgen regnet, gehe ich ins Kino"

the verb does indeed start the second clause, as it always will in such cases.

What's more, you can think of this as the same as the verb coming second in the following sentence:

"Morgen gehe ich ins Kino"

compared to:

"Wenn es morgen regnet, gehe ich ins Kino"

If you think of the entire dependent clause "Wenn es morgen regnet" as an individual adverb like "morgen", then you're just applying that rule you learned much earlier: the verb always comes second. In each case "gehe" is the second element in the sentence.

Answer 2

In your example "wenn" is a conjunction in a reverse-order main-sentence sentence pair.

In "forward" order the sentence pair would read: Ich gehe ins Kino, wenn es morgen regnet.

Since both are main sentences ("Hauptsätze") their verb does not move, except for one reason: If the Subject is not the first word in the sentence. So, the first main sentence moves to the end after the first and the coma, and the subject and verb trade places, because the subject is no longer first in the sentence.

HTH