Breakdown of Der Urlaub fängt am vierten Juni an.
der Urlaub
the vacation / the holiday
anfangen
to start
der Juni
June
am
on the / at the
vierte
fourth
Questions & Answers about Der Urlaub fängt am vierten Juni an.
Why is it vierten and not just vierte?
In German, ordinal numbers act like adjectives. Because the date comes after am (which hides the dative article dem), the ordinal number must take the dative ending -en. So, vierte becomes vierten.
What is am short for, and why do we use it here?
am is a contraction of the preposition an and the dative article dem. German always uses am to say "on" when talking about days of the week or specific dates.
Why is the word an sitting all by itself at the end of the sentence?
That an belongs to the verb anfangen, which means "to start" or "to begin". It is a separable verb. In a regular main clause, the conjugated part (fängt) takes the second position, and the prefix (an) gets pushed to the very end of the sentence.
Why does fängt have an umlaut (the two dots) over the "a"?
The verb anfangen has a vowel change in the present tense for "you" (singular) and "he/she/it", where the a changes to an ä. Since der Urlaub (the vacation) counts as a third-person "it", the correct form is fängt.
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