Word
Die Parade war taktisch klug, wenngleich zu spät.
Meaning
The parry was tactically smart, albeit too late.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Die Parade war taktisch klug, wenngleich zu spät.
sein
to be
zu
too (e.g., too big)
spät
late
klug
clever
Questions & Answers about Die Parade war taktisch klug, wenngleich zu spät.
Why doesn't the clause after wenngleich have a verb or subject?
wenngleich translates to "albeit" or "even though" and is frequently used to attach an elliptical clause. An elliptical clause is a shortened phrase where the subject and verb are left out to avoid repeating them. If we wrote the full clause out, it would be wenngleich sie zu spät war.
Could I just use obwohl instead of wenngleich here?
You could, but wenngleich sounds much more natural for this kind of shortened phrase. wenngleich belongs to a slightly more elevated register (like "albeit" in English) and is highly preferred when attaching these quick, verb-less fragments. In contrast, obwohl is almost always expected to introduce a full subordinate clause with a conjugated verb at the very end.
Why doesn't the word taktisch have an adjective ending here?
Because it is acting as an adverb. It describes exactly how the parry was smart (klug), rather than describing the parry directly. In German, adjectives and adverbs share the exact same base form, and adverbs never take grammatical endings.
I usually think of a Parade as a festive street parade. Why is it translated as "parry"?