Word
Als sie sich selbstständig gemacht hat, gab es viele Probleme.
Meaning
When she became self-employed, there were many problems.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Als sie sich selbstständig gemacht hat, gab es viele Probleme.
sie
she
machen
to make, to do
haben
to have
das Problem
the problem
Questions & Answers about Als sie sich selbstständig gemacht hat, gab es viele Probleme.
Why is the word for "when" Als here instead of Wenn?
In German, you must use als when talking about a single event or a specific period of time in the past. Because becoming self-employed happened just once in the past, we use als. If you were talking about the present, the future, or an event that happened repeatedly, you would use wenn.
Why is hat at the very end of the first clause?
The word als is a subordinating conjunction, which means it kicks the conjugated verb to the very end of its clause. Because the sentence uses the past tense phrase hat gemacht, the conjugated helping verb hat gets pushed all the way to the comma, after the participle gemacht.
Why does the second part say gab es instead of es gab?
In German main clauses, the verb must always be in the second position. The entire first part of the sentence (Als sie sich selbstständig gemacht hat) counts as one big block in position one. To keep the verb in position two, the verb gab must come immediately after the comma, pushing the subject es after it.
Why is the reflexive pronoun sich used here?