What's with the placement of "aber" here?

Question

I was reading a grammar book's lesson on modal auxilaries and came across the following two sentences in a reading exercise (which, I should add, do not directly follow each other). > (1) Anna spielt Klavier gern, nicht so gut aber wie die Mutter. > (2) Seine Stimme ist nicht stark, und doch nicht besonders schwach; sie ist aber schön. The placement of *aber* in both cases bothers me. In the first, the English translation, if I'm not mistaken, should be > Anna likes playing the piano, but [she does not play it] as well as [her] mother. But it's weird to me, as an English speaker, that the *aber* is placed in the middle of the clause, rather than at the beginning. There's a similar problem to me with the second sentence to me. For what it's worth, the book I'm using is fairly old -- it was published in 1968, and it even gives *Knabe* as the translation for *boy*. (I'm borrowing it from a library.) So I'm not sure if it simply has outdated conventions or something. But regardless: - I'm assuming that there is nothing wrong with the placement of *aber* in either case. If so, is this the result of some more general rule or convention governing conjunctions? Is there thus some sort of flexibility with placement? Or does this have anything to do with the connotations of the two sentences *here specifically*? - Does said rule possibly depend on whether or not the conjunction is subordinating? If I'm not mistaken, *aber* isn't one of the subordinating conjunctions, and at least "intuitively" (and as someone whose German knowledge isn't that high), I imagine that it'd be more difficult to justify any potential word order change for *subordinating* conjunctions. (Naturally, I could be wrong -- again, my German knowledge isn't that high.)

Answer 1

Hello, I like your enthusiasm and eagerness to figure this out but I think you are overthinking it too much. Aber, ja, doch, mal are all 'modal particles' but are also frequently used as flavoring words, just like we have in English. In these cases you could directly translate aber as but , but direct translations are never exact; you have to feel what the writer is trying to evoke. Also when written, many languages/authors can defy grammar/structure rules resulting in a poetic tone. When learning a foreign language you should stick to the rules but understand language is not a science. Even natives make "mistakes" but what sounds right to a native speaker will be used even if not grammatically correct.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

As a native speaker of German, I have to admit that I find both sentences slightly odd. Especially the second sentence makes no sense. I was wondering from which old-fashioned book they came until I read on and saw that the grammar book is from 1968. This explains a lot. I would rewrite the sentences as follows:

(1) Anna spielt gerne Klavier, aber nicht so gut wie ihre Mutter. (Anna likes playing the piano, but doesn't play as well as her mother.)

(2) Seine Stimme ist nicht stark, aber auch nicht zu schwach; sie ist schoen. (His voice is not strong, but not too weak either; it is nice.)

You are right that there are coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, but this only determines the position of the verb in the sub-clause. Coordinating conjunctions (aber, oder, und , denn, doch, sondern) keep the original sentence structure, where as subordinating conjuctions invert the position of the pronoun and the verb. Examples for subordinating conjuctions are:

allerdings (however/ indeed), als ob (as if), als (when), bevor (before), bis (until/ by the time), da (since/ because), daher/ darum/ deshalb (therefore/ that's why), damit (so that), daß (that), falls (if), indem (by), nachdem (after), ob (whether/ if), obwohl (although), seit/ seitdem (since), sobald (as soon as), sooft (as often as), soviel (as much as), soweit (as far as), trotz (despite), trotzdem (nevertheless), während (while), weil (because), wenn (when)

The position of the conjunction is more flexible in German than in English, for example:

Er würde gerne kommen, aber er kann nicht kommen. (He would like to come, but he can't come.)

Er würde gerne kommen, er kann aber nicht kommen! (He would like to come, but he is really not able to come!)

By moving "aber" to another position in the sentence, we change the intensity of the meaning, which is only possible by adding "really" to the English sentence and by using "able to" instead of "can". 

I hope this helps!

Viel Spass weiterhin mit Deutsch!

Answer 3

<Aber> can mean <but> or <however> which doesn’t change the sentence in meaning but does place a different emphasis - whatever <aber> follows is stressed more. <aber> Is then placed as <however> would be placed.