Questions & Answers about Trinkt der Hund Wasser?
Why is the verb Trinkt at the very beginning of the sentence?
In German, you form a yes/no question by putting the verb in the very first position, followed immediately by the subject. This is called Verb-first (V1) word order. So, Trinkt der Hund... literally means "Drinks the dog...".
Where is the word for "does" in this sentence?
German doesn't use helper words like "do" or "does" to ask questions. Instead of saying "Does the dog drink?", you just swap the subject and the verb: Trinkt der Hund?
Why does the verb end in -t here?
The verb must match its subject, which is der Hund (the dog). Since the dog is a single entity (acting like "he", "she", or "it"), we take the stem of the verb trinken and add the ending -t, giving us trinkt.
Why do we use der Hund instead of den Hund?
der Hund is the subject of the sentence, meaning the dog is the one doing the drinking. The subject is always in the nominative case, so the masculine word for "the" stays der. We would only use den if the dog were the object receiving an action.
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