Breakdown of Wir haben das Haus panisch durchsucht, was nicht geholfen hat.
das Haus
the house
haben
to have
wir
we
nicht
not
helfen
to help
was
which (referring to a whole clause)
durchsuchen
to search through
panisch
panicky
Questions & Answers about Wir haben das Haus panisch durchsucht, was nicht geholfen hat.
Why is the relative pronoun was used here instead of das?
When a relative pronoun refers to an entire preceding clause or idea rather than a specific noun, you must use was. Here, was refers to the whole action of frantically searching the house. If you used das, grammatically it would refer to the closest neuter noun, meaning the house itself didn't help!
The past participle is durchsucht instead of durchgesucht. Is durchsuchen inseparable here?
Yes! Verbs with the prefix durch- can be either separable or inseparable, often with different meanings and stress. Here, durchsuchen is inseparable and means to search through a space or a person. Because it is inseparable, the past participle is formed without the ge- prefix.
How could I add the focus particle sogar from this lesson to emphasize that searching the house was an extreme measure?
You place focus particles directly before the element you want to highlight. To show that searching the house was the most extreme thing you did, you would put it before the object: Wir haben sogar das Haus panisch durchsucht, was nicht geholfen hat.
The English translation says frantically, but panisch looks like panic. Can I just use the base adjective as an adverb here?
Absolutely. In German, almost any adjective can act as an adverb to describe a verb without changing its form. While English often requires an -ly suffix (frantic to frantically) or a phrase (in a panic), German simply uses the base adjective panisch to describe how the searching was done.
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