Breakdown of Wir errichten den Unterschlupf, jedoch fehlt uns das Brennholz.
wir
we
uns
us
fehlen
to be missing
jedoch
however
Questions & Answers about Wir errichten den Unterschlupf, jedoch fehlt uns das Brennholz.
How could we express the lack of firewood using the current lesson's preposition mangels?
You could rewrite the sentence to combine the clauses, for example: Mangels Brennholz errichten wir nur einen Unterschlupf. (For lack of firewood, we only build a shelter.) Mangels normally takes the genitive case, but when a noun like Brennholz appears without an article or adjective to show the case ending, it remains in its base form.
Why is it uns and not wir in the second half of the sentence?
The verb fehlen (to lack / to be missing) flips the expected English structure. The thing that is missing is the grammatical subject (here, das Brennholz), and the person experiencing the lack takes the dative case (here, uns). Literally, it translates to 'the firewood is missing to us'.
Why does the verb fehlt come immediately after jedoch?
In this sentence, jedoch is functioning as an adverb in position one. Because German uses V2 (verb-second) word order in main clauses, the conjugated verb fehlt must directly follow it in position two.
What is the difference between bauen and errichten here?
While bauen is the general word for 'to build', errichten sounds a bit more deliberate, translating closer to 'to erect' or 'to establish'. It is commonly used for shelters, monuments, or temporary camps.