Time adverbs answer the question wann? ("when?") — and sometimes wie oft? ("how often?"). German has a compact, high-frequency set you will use in almost every sentence: heute, morgen, jetzt, bald, oft, immer, damals. Like all adverbs, they never change form. The two things that trip learners up are not the words themselves but (1) a notorious trap where the same little word morgen means both "tomorrow" and, with one tweak, "in the mornings," and (2) word order — German puts time early in the sentence and time before place, the reverse of English. This page sorts out both.
The core inventory
German time adverbs fall into four useful groups.
| Group | Adverbs | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Points in time | heute, gestern, vorgestern, morgen, übermorgen, jetzt, gleich, sofort, bald, dann | today, yesterday, day before yesterday, tomorrow, day after tomorrow, now, in a moment, immediately, soon, then |
| Frequency | immer, meistens, oft, manchmal, selten, nie | always, mostly, often, sometimes, rarely, never |
| Sequence | zuerst, dann, danach, schließlich | first, then, afterwards, finally |
| Relative / past reference | vorher, nachher, damals, neulich, früher | beforehand, afterwards, back then, recently, in the past |
Notice the neat symmetry in the points group: gestern / heute / morgen (yesterday / today / tomorrow) is extended in both directions by vorgestern (the day before yesterday) and übermorgen (the day after tomorrow) — two single words where English needs a whole phrase.
Übermorgen fängt der Urlaub an, ich kann es kaum erwarten.
The vacation starts the day after tomorrow; I can hardly wait.
Vorgestern war ich noch krank, heute geht es mir schon besser.
The day before yesterday I was still sick; today I'm already feeling better.
Points and immediacy: jetzt, gleich, sofort, bald
These mark how soon. They form a little scale from "this instant" to "at some point ahead":
Ich komme gleich, ich muss nur kurz telefonieren.
I'm coming in a sec, I just need to make a quick call.
Hör sofort damit auf!
Stop that immediately!
Gleich ("in a moment, shortly") is gentler than sofort ("right now, immediately"); bald ("soon") is vaguer still. Jetzt is the present instant. Getting the nuance right is the difference between a relaxed "I'll be right there" and an urgent command.
Frequency adverbs
Frequency adverbs sit on a scale from immer (100%) down to nie (0%):
Ich trinke morgens immer einen Kaffee, sonst funktioniere ich nicht.
I always have a coffee in the morning, otherwise I don't function.
Er kommt oft zu spät, aber er entschuldigt sich nie.
He's often late, but he never apologizes.
Wir gehen manchmal ins Kino, meistens bleiben wir aber zu Hause.
We sometimes go to the cinema, but mostly we stay home.
These slot into the same early-Mittelfeld position as other time adverbs (see the word-order section below).
The morgen / der Morgen / morgens trap
This is the single most error-prone corner of German time vocabulary, because three closely related words look almost identical:
| Form | Word class | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| morgen | adverb (lowercase) | tomorrow |
| der Morgen | noun (capitalized) | the morning |
| morgens | adverb (lowercase, -s) | in the mornings (habitually) |
Capitalization is the giveaway: the noun der Morgen ("the morning") is always capitalized, while the adverb morgen ("tomorrow") is lowercase. And then there is morgens, an adverb meaning "in the mornings, every morning."
Morgen früh fahre ich nach Köln.
Tomorrow morning I'm going to Cologne. (morgen = tomorrow; morgen früh = tomorrow morning)
Am Morgen ist die Stadt noch ruhig.
In the morning the city is still quiet. (der Morgen, the noun, after the preposition an/am)
Morgens bin ich immer müde.
In the mornings I'm always tired. (morgens = habitually, every morning)
So "tomorrow morning" is morgen früh (literally "tomorrow early") — you do not stack morgen + Morgen. Keep the three apart by their job: morgen points to the next day, Morgen is the part of the day, morgens describes a recurring habit.
The habitual -s adverbs: montags, abends, sonntags
Here is the productive pattern competitors usually skip. German turns a time noun into a habitual adverb by adding -s, giving the meaning "regularly in the X" or "on Xs." It works across the day and the week:
| Base | -s adverb | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| der Morgen | morgens | in the mornings |
| der Abend | abends | in the evenings |
| die Nacht | nachts | at night (habitually) |
| der Montag | montags | on Mondays |
| der Sonntag | sonntags | on Sundays |
| das Wochenende | wochenends | on weekends |
Crucially, these -s adverbs are lowercase, even though the noun they come from is capitalized. This is a deliberate orthographic signal: the lowercase montags is an adverb ("on Mondays, every Monday"), whereas the capitalized Montag is the noun ("Monday").
Sonntags hat hier fast alles geschlossen.
On Sundays almost everything here is closed.
Abends gehe ich oft noch eine Runde laufen.
In the evenings I often go for a run.
The English equivalent is the phrase "in the mornings / on Mondays / on weekends" — a small construction where German offers a single tidy word. Recognising the -s immediately tells you the meaning is habitual, not a one-off.
Word order: time comes early, and before place
German places time adverbs early in the Mittelfeld (the middle of the sentence), typically right after the finite verb and any pronouns. And in the time–manner–place sequence, time always precedes place — the exact opposite of English, which ends with the time:
Wir treffen uns heute Abend im Café.
We're meeting at the café this evening. (German: time 'heute Abend' before place 'im Café'; English: reverse)
Ich war gestern beim Arzt.
I was at the doctor's yesterday. (gestern before beim Arzt)
Compare the two languages directly: German says gestern beim Arzt (time, then place), English says "at the doctor's yesterday" (place, then time). If you order your German the English way, it sounds noticeably off even when every word is correct.
You can also front a time adverb to the very first position (the Vorfeld) for emphasis or flow — but then the finite verb must come second (verb-second rule):
Morgen treffe ich meine alten Freunde.
Tomorrow I'm meeting my old friends. (morgen fronted → verb 'treffe' second)
Both placements are correct; fronting simply foregrounds the time.
noch, schon, erst — the timing particles
A small set of adverbs fine-tunes timing relative to expectation: noch ("still"), schon ("already"), and erst ("not until / only just"). They are everyday workhorses:
Bist du schon fertig? — Nein, ich brauche noch fünf Minuten.
Are you done already? — No, I still need five more minutes.
Der Zug kommt erst um zehn.
The train doesn't come until ten.
Schon says the event arrived sooner than you might expect; noch says a state continues; erst says something happens later than expected ("not until"). They are subtle but extremely common, and worth drilling in real dialogue.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ich gehe morgen Morgen nach Köln.
Incorrect — 'tomorrow morning' is morgen früh, not morgen Morgen.
✅ Ich gehe morgen früh nach Köln.
I'm going to Cologne tomorrow morning.
Don't stack the adverb morgen with the noun Morgen. The fixed phrase is morgen früh.
❌ Montags ist mein freier Tag diese Woche.
Incorrect — lowercase montags means 'on Mondays' (habitual); here you mean this coming Monday.
✅ Der Montag ist mein freier Tag diese Woche.
Monday is my day off this week.
Lowercase montags = "on Mondays (every Monday)." For the one specific day, use the capitalized noun der Montag.
❌ Wir treffen uns im Café heute Abend.
Incorrect — English place-then-time order; German wants time before place.
✅ Wir treffen uns heute Abend im Café.
We're meeting at the café this evening.
Time before place: heute Abend comes before im Café.
❌ Morgen ich fahre nach Hamburg.
Incorrect — a fronted time adverb forces the verb to second position.
✅ Morgen fahre ich nach Hamburg.
Tomorrow I'm going to Hamburg.
When morgen opens the sentence, the verb (fahre) must come second, before the subject.
❌ Am Morgens trinke ich Kaffee.
Incorrect — morgens is already an adverb; it doesn't take a preposition or article.
✅ Morgens trinke ich Kaffee.
In the mornings I drink coffee.
The -s adverb morgens stands alone. To use the noun with a preposition, say am Morgen (no -s).
Key Takeaways
- Time adverbs answer wann? and never change form: heute, morgen, jetzt, bald, oft, immer, damals.
- Watch the trio: lowercase morgen = "tomorrow," capitalized der Morgen = "the morning," and morgens = "in the mornings." "Tomorrow morning" is morgen früh.
- The -s adverbs (morgens, abends, montags, sonntags) are lowercase and mean habitually "in the X / on Xs."
- German places time adverbs early and before place — the reverse of English.
- A fronted time adverb triggers verb-second word order.
Now practice German
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Start learning German→Related Topics
- Adverbs: OverviewA2 — What German adverbs are, why manner adverbs are just the bare adjective (no -ly), and the main categories — time, place, manner, degree, frequency, and sentence adverbs — none of which decline.
- The Mittelfeld and TeKaMoLo OrderingB1 — How adverbials and objects line up in the middle of a German clause — the default Temporal–Kausal–Modal–Lokal sequence and why it reverses English order.
- Prepositions of TimeA2 — The German time prepositions — am, im, um, vor, nach, seit, bis, in, für, während — organized by clock, day, month, and duration.
- Adverbs of Place and Direction (hier, da, dort, hin, her)A2 — How German splits location (wo: hier, da, dort) from direction (wohin: hierhin, dahin) and encodes speaker-relative movement with hin (away) and her (toward) — three distinctions English's here/there collapse into one.
- Temporal Conjunctions: als, wenn, während, bevor, nachdem, bis, seitB1 — The time conjunctions all send the verb to the end, but each marks a precise relationship — and the als/wenn split for the past is one of the top intermediate errors.