Word
Diese neuen Ohrstöpsel, die nerven mich beim Schlafen.
Meaning
These new earplugs, they bother me while sleeping.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Diese neuen Ohrstöpsel, die nerven mich beim Schlafen.
ich
I
schlafen
to sleep
neu
new
dieser
this / that (fem.: diese, neut.: dieses)
Questions & Answers about Diese neuen Ohrstöpsel, die nerven mich beim Schlafen.
Why do we use die instead of sie to mean 'they' in this sentence?
This sentence uses a spoken grammar structure called left dislocation. We pull the topic (Diese neuen Ohrstöpsel) to the very front for emphasis, and then immediately resume it with a demonstrative pronoun, which is die here. In spoken German, demonstrative pronouns like der, die, and das are used much more often than personal pronouns like sie to point back to something just mentioned.
Do Diese neuen Ohrstöpsel and the pronoun die need to be in a specific case?
Yes, they must be in the same case, which is determined by their role in the main clause. Since the earplugs are doing the bothering, they are the subject of the verb nerven. Therefore, both the left-dislocated noun phrase (Diese neuen Ohrstöpsel) and the resuming pronoun (die) are in the nominative case.
Why is the ending on the adjective neuen instead of neue?
The word Diese acts like a definite article (a der-word). In the plural, adjectives following a der-word take the weak ending -en in all cases. If there were no article, it would take the strong ending, as in Neue Ohrstöpsel.
Why is Schlafen capitalized and what exactly does beim mean here?