Word
Wir haben das Gebäude der Oper gegenüber bewundert.
Meaning
We admired the building opposite the opera.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Wir haben das Gebäude der Oper gegenüber bewundert.
haben
to have
wir
we
das Gebäude
the building
der
who, which, that (relative pronoun; die, das)
Questions & Answers about Wir haben das Gebäude der Oper gegenüber bewundert.
Why is gegenüber placed after der Oper instead of before it?
The word gegenüber is a special preposition that can go either before or after the noun it refers to. You can say either gegenüber der Oper or der Oper gegenüber, and both mean exactly the same thing. Putting it after the noun is very common in German.
Why does the sentence say der Oper if the word for opera is feminine (die Oper)?
The preposition gegenüber always requires the dative case. Because Oper is a feminine noun, its article changes from die to der in the dative case.
Why doesn't the past participle bewundert have a ge- at the beginning?
The verb bewundern (to admire) starts with the inseparable prefix be-. Verbs that start with inseparable prefixes never add ge- at the beginning of their past participle forms.
Why is bewundert at the very end of the sentence?
This sentence uses the spoken past tense (Perfekt). In German, the helping verb (haben) takes the second position in the sentence, and the past participle (bewundert) is pushed to the very end, forming a bracket around the rest of the sentence.