Tekamolo-Rule will help you to form correct German sentences

Sentence structure in German is sometimes quite difficult, even for advanced learners. Especially when it comes to correctly arranging the objects or complements in the middle part (Mittelteil) of a sentence. But there is a simple trick that will help you to form correct sentence. It is called Tekamolo-Rule

Let’s look at a few normal German sentences. You can divide a sentence into four parts: The front part (Vorne), the front verb (Links), the middle part (Mittelteil) and the back verb (Rechts). But not every sentence needs two verbs. And here are the examples:

In many propositional sentences, the subject is in the first position (Vorne). In the second position (Links) you find the conjugated verb. It is conjugated to fit the subject of the sentence. Sometimes a sentence needs a second verb. It is not conjugated and is at the end of the sentence (Rechts).

It gets a bit more complicated in the middle section. It remains unchanged when you change the tense, but word order is very important in the German language, even in the middle part.

The Te-Ka-Mo-Lo Rule

This rule is one of the most useful aids for anyone learning German as a foreign language. It helps you to formulate even longer sentences correctly. But what does „tekamolo“ actually mean? It stands for temporal (when?), kausal (why?), modal (how?) and lokal (where?) and shows you the order of the complements for the middle part of your sentence.

Let’s look at three examples in our table. To make it easier for you to recognise the individual elements, we have colour-coded the temporal, causal, modal and local components of the middle part. As you can see, the order always remains the same.

Rearranging parts of a sentence

If you want to write in a more varied way, you can put the causal or temporal complement in front. Don’t worry, there is no special emphasis. The subject is placed directly after the verb.

Caution with reflexive verbs

It is a little more complicated with reflexive verbs. Here, the reflexive pronoun is directly after the verb. Unless you use a personal pronoun, in which case it comes after the personal pronoun. Sounds complicated? Let’s look at two examples:

You can remember as a rule of thumb: The reflexive pronoun either comes after the verb or, if you use a personal pronoun, after the personal pronoun. But always after…