Breakdown of Leider beeinflusst die Angst unsere Wahrnehmung.
leider
unfortunately
unser
our
die Angst
the fear
beeinflussen
to influence
die Wahrnehmung
the perception
Questions & Answers about Leider beeinflusst die Angst unsere Wahrnehmung.
Why is there a definite article die before Angst when the English translation just says "fear"?
In German, abstract nouns like Angst (fear), Liebe (love), or Zeit (time) almost always take a definite article when you are talking about the concept in a general, universal sense. English usually leaves the article out in these cases.
How would the word order change if we replaced both the subject die Angst and the object unsere Wahrnehmung with pronouns?
The subject pronoun must stay right next to the verb, followed by the object pronoun. Since both nouns are feminine, replacing them with sie gives us: Leider beeinflusst sie sie. (Unfortunately, it influences it.) In the Mittelfeld (the middle part of the sentence), pronoun subjects always precede object pronouns, just as nominal subjects usually precede nominal objects.
Both die Angst and unsere Wahrnehmung are feminine. Since feminine articles look the same in the nominative and accusative cases, how do we know which one is the subject?
Word order and context are your main clues. When a sentence starts with an adverb like Leider, the conjugated verb takes position 2, and the subject usually follows right behind it in position 3. The object then comes afterward. While German allows swapping them to heavily emphasize the object, common sense tells us that fear is doing the influencing here, not the other way around.
Why doesn't the verb beeinflussen split, and how do we form its past participle?
The verb beeinflussen uses the inseparable prefix be-. Because it is inseparable, it never gets pushed to the end of the sentence. Furthermore, inseparable verbs do not take the -ge- prefix in the perfect tense, so the past participle is simply beeinflusst (for example: Die Angst hat uns beeinflusst).
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