Breakdown of Reduziere das Tempo, das Training ist mir zu intensiv!
sein
to be
zu
too (e.g., too big)
mir
me / to me (dative)
das Training
the training/practice
der
who, which, that (relative pronoun; die, das)
reduzieren
to reduce
das Tempo
the pace
intensiv
intensive
Questions & Answers about Reduziere das Tempo, das Training ist mir zu intensiv!
Why do we use mir here instead of für mich?
Using the dative pronoun mir with zu plus an adjective is the classic dative of viewpoint. It expresses a subjective judgment: the training is too intensive from your specific perspective. You could grammatically say für mich, but using mir is much more common and sounds more natural in everyday German when expressing personal limits or feelings about a situation.
Why does the command Reduziere have an -e at the end? Isn't the informal imperative usually just the verb stem?
For most verbs, the singular informal imperative can drop the -e, making Reduzier das Tempo! perfectly fine and very common in spoken German. However, keeping the -e is grammatically correct and sometimes sounds a bit more emphatic or formal. Remember that verbs whose stems end in -d or -t, like arbeiten, strictly require the -e, but for reduzieren it is purely optional.
Why isn't the verb ist pushed to the end of the second phrase?
These are two independent main clauses simply joined by a comma. In casual German, it is very common to connect two related thoughts this way without a conjunction like denn or weil. Because there is no subordinating conjunction to trigger subordinate word order, the verb ist stays in its normal second position.
Could I place mir differently in the second clause, like das Training ist zu intensiv mir?
No, pronouns in German strongly prefer to come as early as possible after the conjugated verb. Placing the dative pronoun mir immediately after ist is the standard word order. Putting it at the very end of the sentence after the adjective sounds unnatural.
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