Breakdown of Da das Tattoostudio voll ist, hören wir die Nadel laut surren.
sein
to be
wir
we
hören
to hear / to listen
laut
loud, loudly
voll
full
der
who, which, that (relative pronoun; die, das)
da
since, because
das Tattoostudio
the tattoo parlor
die Nadel
the needle
surren
to buzz
Questions & Answers about Da das Tattoostudio voll ist, hören wir die Nadel laut surren.
Why is it just surren at the end instead of zu surren?
Verbs of perception, like hören (to hear) and sehen (to see), take a bare infinitive. You don't use zu before the second verb. This works similarly to English, where we say "we hear the needle buzz," not "we hear the needle to buzz."
The English translation says "buzzing." Why does the German sentence use the basic infinitive surren?
German doesn't have a direct equivalent to the English continuous "-ing" form. When you hear or see an ongoing action, German simply uses the plain infinitive. Therefore, wir hören die Nadel surren translates perfectly to both "we hear the needle buzz" and "we hear the needle buzzing."
Doesn't da usually mean "there"? Why does it mean "since" here?
As an adverb, da usually means "there" or "then." However, when it is used to introduce a subordinate clause and pushes the verb to the end (like ist here), it acts as a conjunction meaning "since" or "because." It is very similar to weil, but da is especially common when placing the reason at the very beginning of a sentence.
Why does the second part of the sentence say hören wir instead of wir hören?
German main clauses require the conjugated verb to be in the second position. Because the entire first chunk of the sentence (Da das Tattoostudio voll ist) occupies the first position, the verb hören must come immediately after the comma to take the second position. This pushes the subject wir right after it.
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