Word
Die erste Auflage, welche ausverkauft ist, war ein Erfolg.
Meaning
The first edition, which is sold out, was a success.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Die erste Auflage, welche ausverkauft ist, war ein Erfolg.
sein
to be
ein
a, an (eine)
der Erfolg
the success
erste
first (adjective)
Questions & Answers about Die erste Auflage, welche ausverkauft ist, war ein Erfolg.
Why use welche here instead of the standard relative pronoun die?
welche is a relative pronoun that means the exact same thing as die in this context. It belongs mostly to written German, where authors use it to sound more formal or to avoid repeating die too many times. In everyday spoken German, you will almost always hear die erste Auflage, die ausverkauft ist.
How do we know to use the form welche rather than welcher or welches?
A relative pronoun takes its gender and number from the noun it refers back to, which here is the feminine singular noun die Auflage. Its case is determined by its job in its own clause. Here, it is the subject of the relative clause (welche ausverkauft ist), so it must be in the nominative case. The feminine nominative form is welche.
Why is the conjugated verb ist placed right before the second comma?
The section between the commas is a relative clause. Relative clauses are subordinate clauses, and the cardinal rule for subordinate clauses in German is that the conjugated verb (here, ist) gets pushed to the very end of that clause.
Can ausverkauft be used for physical products, or is it only for events like concerts?