Breakdown of Wir erlauben das Schwimmen, weil es sinnvoll ist.
sein
to be
es
it
wir
we
schwimmen
to swim
weil
because (subordinating)
der
who, which, that (relative pronoun; die, das)
sinnvoll
sensible
erlauben
to allow
Questions & Answers about Wir erlauben das Schwimmen, weil es sinnvoll ist.
Why is Schwimmen capitalized and preceded by das?
Here, Schwimmen is a nominalized infinitive, which means a verb has been turned into a noun. In German, you can turn any infinitive verb into a noun to talk about the activity itself, much like adding '-ing' in English. These nouns are always neuter, which is why it uses das, and as nouns, they must be capitalized.
The English translation says 'makes sense', but the German says sinnvoll ist. Why not use the verb machen?
While you might hear some native speakers say Sinn machen (a direct copy from English), it is widely considered poor style in German. The traditional and correct way to express that something 'makes sense' is to say it is sensible (es ist sinnvoll) or that it yields sense (es ergibt Sinn).
What does the es in 'weil es sinnvoll ist' refer to?
The pronoun es refers back to the neuter noun das Schwimmen in the first half of the sentence. Because das Schwimmen is grammatically neuter, it must be replaced by the neuter pronoun es rather than er or sie.
Why does the verb ist come at the very end of the sentence?
The word weil (because) is a subordinating conjunction. As a quick refresher: subordinating conjunctions always kick the conjugated verb in their clause, which in this case is ist, to the very end.
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