Breakdown of Beim Schach muss man jeden Fehler voraussehen.
müssen
to have to, must
beim
at the (bei + dem)
der Fehler
the mistake
man
one / you (impersonal)
jeder
everyone / each
das Schach
the chess
voraussehen
to foresee
Questions & Answers about Beim Schach muss man jeden Fehler voraussehen.
Why do we use beim instead of im for 'in chess'?
German treats playing a game as an activity or an ongoing event rather than an enclosed space. You use the preposition bei (contracted here with the dative article dem to make beim) to mean 'while playing' or 'in the context of'.
Why does jeder take the -en ending here to become jeden Fehler?
Fehler (mistake) is a masculine noun (der Fehler). In this sentence, it is the direct object receiving the action of voraussehen (to foresee), which puts it in the accusative case. This changes the determiner jeder to jeden.
voraussehen (to foresee) is a separable verb. Why hasn't voraus- been sent to the end of the sentence?
Normally, the prefix would separate and move to the end. However, because this sentence uses the modal verb muss, the modal takes the conjugated position and forces the main verb to remain in its full, unseparated infinitive form at the very end of the clause.
How could we use the current lesson's verb gelten als (to be considered as) to talk about a chess mistake?
You could say Ein unvorsichtiger Zug gilt als Fehler (A careless move is considered a mistake). Because gelten als acts as a copula (linking) verb, the noun after als stays in the nominative case to match the subject, rather than taking the accusative.
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