Breakdown of Der Junge war traurig, denn er hatte Pech.
sein
to be
er
he
haben
to have
der Junge
the boy
denn
because
traurig
sad
das Pech
the bad luck
Questions & Answers about Der Junge war traurig, denn er hatte Pech.
Why do we use war in the first part of the sentence?
war is the simple past tense of sein (to be) and means "was". We use it here because the subject is Der Junge (The boy, which is a "he"). If this were happening right now, we would use the present tense: Der Junge ist traurig (The boy is sad).
Is hatte the past tense of haben?
Yes! hatte means "had". For the pronouns er (he), sie (she), and es (it), the simple past form of haben is hatte. If the sentence were in the present tense, it would be er hat Pech (he has bad luck).
I thought words for "because" push the verb to the end of the sentence. Why is hatte in the normal second position?
You are probably thinking of the word weil (because), which does push the verb to the very end. However, this sentence uses denn. denn is a coordinating conjunction, which means it sits outside the sentence structure and doesn't change the word order at all. After denn, you just start a normal sentence: Subject (er), Verb (hatte), Object (Pech).
What exactly is Pech?
Literally, Pech means "pitch" or "tar" (the sticky black substance). But in German, the everyday expression Pech haben simply means "to have bad luck". So when Germans want to say someone is unlucky, they literally say the person "has pitch"!
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