Breakdown of Die unabhängige Arbeit war frustrierend, aber wir hatten es selber geschafft.
sein
to be
es
it
haben
to have
aber
but
wir
we
die Arbeit
the work
schaffen
to manage / to accomplish
der
who, which, that (relative pronoun; die, das)
selber
oneself
frustrierend
frustrating
unabhängig
independent
Questions & Answers about Die unabhängige Arbeit war frustrierend, aber wir hatten es selber geschafft.
Why does this sentence use selber instead of selbst?
In this sentence, selber acts as an emphatic pronoun emphasizing wir (we ... ourselves). You could absolutely use selbst here with no change in meaning. Selber is simply the more colloquial, everyday spoken version of selbst. Just remember that while selbst can sometimes also mean "even" depending on its placement, selber only ever means "-self" or "-selves".
I thought schaffen meant "to create". Why does it mean "managed" here?
The verb schaffen has two meanings with completely different past tense forms. When it means "to create", it is an irregular verb, and the past participle is geschaffen. However, in everyday German it is very commonly used to mean "to manage", "to handle", or "to make it". For this meaning, it acts as a regular verb, which is why the past participle here is geschafft.
Why do we use hatten here instead of haben?
This uses the Plusquamperfekt (Past Perfect) tense, which translates to "had" plus a past participle ("had managed"). Because the first half of the sentence establishes a past context with war ("was"), using hatten geschafft keeps the whole narrative in the past, emphasizing that the action of managing it was already a completed fact at that time.
Why doesn't the verb hatten come immediately after aber?
The word aber is a coordinating conjunction, meaning it occupies "position 0" in the sentence structure. It acts as a bridge between two independent clauses without counting towards the word order of the second clause. Because of this, the subject wir takes position 1, and the conjugated verb hatten stays in its normal place in position 2.
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