Breakdown of Die Tür war den ganzen Tag offen.
sein
to be
die Tür
the door
ganz
quite, completely; whole
der Tag
the day
offen
open
Questions & Answers about Die Tür war den ganzen Tag offen.
Wait, is war ... offen a stative passive? I thought stative passives needed a past participle.
You are exactly right—it is not a stative passive! offen is just a regular adjective. A true stative passive in this sentence would use the past participle of öffnen (to open), which is geöffnet. So, the stative passive version is Die Tür war den ganzen Tag geöffnet. Germans frequently use the adjective offen instead to express the exact same completed state.
Why is it den ganzen Tag (accusative)? Doesn't time usually use a preposition or the dative case?
When you are expressing a specific duration of time—answering the question 'how long?'—German uses the accusative case without any preposition. Because Tag is masculine (der Tag), it becomes den ganzen Tag to show the state lasted for the entire day.
Could I put offen right after war, like in English?
That wouldn't work in German. In a main clause, the conjugated verb (war) takes the second position, but the rest of the predicate (like the adjective offen or a past participle) gets pushed to the very end of the sentence. The time expression (den ganzen Tag) sits comfortably in the middle.
Can I use the spoken past (Perfekt) here and say Die Tür ist den ganzen Tag offen gewesen?
Grammatically, yes, but it sounds a bit clunky. Even in casual spoken German, native speakers strongly prefer the simple past (Präteritum) for the verbs sein (to be), haben (to have), and modal verbs. Using war is much more common and natural here than ist ... gewesen.
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