Reference · module 28
The voice of the press
Everything this module explains, on one page.
sei and habe
Read a report and see whose words you are being given.
- German has a form that exists only to say these are somebody else's words: Er sagte, er sei krank. sei rather than ist marks the whole sentence as reported.
- It is built from the infinitive stem plus -e: er habe, er komme, er gehe, er wisse. sein is the odd one and the most common: ich sei, er sei, sie seien.
- You need this to read, not to speak. A newspaper uses it in every second sentence; a person at a bus stop uses it in none.
- The point it carries is real. Er sagte, er sei krank reports the claim; Er sagte, dass er krank ist quietly agrees with it. Journalists are careful about the difference.
The mistake you are about to make
Er sagte, er war krank.
Er sagte, er sei krank.
English marks reported speech by moving the tense back — he said he was ill. German moves the mood instead: er sei krank says the claim is his, not the paper's.
When sei is not available
Know why a report sometimes falls back on würde.
- For most verbs the reported plural is identical to the ordinary present: sie kommen either way. A form that marks nothing is no use to a reporter.
- So German falls back one step, to the würde form: Sie sagten, sie würden kommen. The distance is kept and the sentence stays unambiguous.
- That is the whole rule: use sei and habe where they are visibly different, and würde where they would not be.
The mistake you are about to make
Sie sagten, sie kommen.
Sie sagten, sie würden kommen.
The plural form is identical to the ordinary present, so the marking disappears: sie kommen says nothing about who is claiming it. German steps down to würden.
Summarising a text
Write three sentences that stand in for a whole article.
- In dem Text geht es um … is the standard opening of every German summary. es geht um takes the accusative and never changes shape.
- Then the reported forms do the work: Der Autor schreibt, die Lage sei ernst. Your opinion belongs in a separate paragraph, marked as yours.
The mistake you are about to make
Der Text geht um den Krieg.
In dem Text geht es um den Krieg.
"The text is about" needs a subject, so der Text moves to the front. The German phrase keeps its own es: in dem Text geht es um.
Naming a source
Attribute a claim precisely and mark how much you trust it.
- laut takes the dative and goes in front; zufolge takes the dative and goes behind: laut dem Bericht, dem Bericht zufolge. They mean the same and differ only in position.
- angeblich means allegedly and quietly says you do not believe it. offenbar means apparently and says the opposite: the evidence points that way.
- vermutlich, wahrscheinlich, möglicherweise are the ladder of certainty. Choosing one of them is a claim about how sure you are, and it is read as one.
The mistake you are about to make
zufolge dem Bericht
dem Bericht zufolge
Zufolge is a preposition that stands behind its noun: dem Bericht zufolge. English has nothing of the kind, so it goes in front on every first attempt.