Asking “Why” in German

Learn how to ask "Why?"

Vocabulary (Review)

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Lesson Transcript

Hallo, ich bin Laura. Hi everybody! I’m Laura.

Welcome to GermanPod101.com’s “Deutsch in 3 Minuten”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn German.

In the last lesson, we learned how to ask "Who" questions in German.

This time, we are going to ask questions with the interrogative word "Why?"

Imagine your boss is giving you a call because you are not at work today... He will certainly ask you Warum sind Sie heute nicht im Büro?

[slowly] Warum sind Sie heute nicht im Büro?

So let’s break down this question.

First we had-

Warum, which is the basic translation of "Why" in German.

Sind Sie is the 2nd person plural of the verb sein.

Heute means "today" and nicht is “not”, and makes the whole sentence negative.

And finally im Büro which is "at the office"

All together it is

Warum sind Sie heute nicht im Büro?

So in German, Warum is the exact translation of "Why", used to ask the reason for something.

So for example, if your boss is asking you "Why are you too late today?" he will say Warum sind Sie heute zu spät?

Here, he uses "Why" in order to get explanations and reasons.

Note that here, the form is formal as we used the 2nd person plural pronoun Sie, which is the polite form for "you".

Now it’s time for Laura’s Insights.

A famous expression in German is

Warum nicht? which means, like in English, "Why not?"

You can use it to accept a proposition if you agree but that you are not really keen to do it. Or, if it was not planned in advance.

For example if a friend asks you suddenly "How about we go to the cinema tonight?"

You can answer Warum nicht? "Why not?"

Before ending this lesson, Let’s review all the ways to translate "Why" in German:

- Warum is the basic translation of "Why," as in Warum sind Sie zu spät? "Why are you late?" and

- Für was? which is "What for?"

Finally, Warum nicht? is "Why not?"

This lesson is the last lesson of this Absolute Beginner’s video series.

But it’s hopefully not the last you learn about the German language! To take your language ability to the next level, check out GermanPod101.com, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn German.

Bis bald!!!

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