Breakdown of Funktioniert die Solarzelle seinetwegen nicht?
nicht
not
funktionieren
to work (function)
seinetwegen
because of him / for his sake
die Solarzelle
the solar cell
Questions & Answers about Funktioniert die Solarzelle seinetwegen nicht?
How exactly is the word seinetwegen formed?
It combines the possessive base sein (his/its) with wegen (because of). To make it easier to pronounce, a connecting -et- is added in the middle. This same pattern applies to all other pronouns, which is how we get words like meinetwegen (because of me) or ihretwegen (because of her/them).
The translation says 'because of him'. Could seinetwegen also mean 'because of it'?
Yes! Because the possessive base for both masculine (er) and neuter (es) nouns is sein, seinetwegen can mean 'because of him' or 'because of it'. If you were just talking about a broken cable (das Kabel), seinetwegen would mean 'because of it'.
Is seinetwegen common in everyday spoken German?
It is used, but in casual spoken German, you will very often hear people say wegen ihm instead. Grammatically, wegen takes the genitive case (which gives us the proper seinetwegen), but substituting the dative form (wegen ihm) is extremely common in daily, informal conversation.
Why is seinetwegen placed before nicht?
In German, the negation word nicht usually comes after adverbs that describe time, manner, place, or reason. Since seinetwegen gives the reason for the action, it is placed before nicht, which sits at the end to negate the entire action of the solar cell working.
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