Breakdown of Dieser Gedanke ging mir gestern durch den Kopf.
dieser
this / that (fem.: diese, neut.: dieses)
gestern
yesterday
der Gedanke
the thought
durch den Kopf gehen
to go through one's mind
Questions & Answers about Dieser Gedanke ging mir gestern durch den Kopf.
Why does the sentence use mir ... durch den Kopf instead of durch meinen Kopf?
This is the possessive dative. When talking about body parts (like der Kopf), German usually avoids possessive words like meinen. Instead, we use the definite article for the body part (den Kopf) and add a dative pronoun (mir) to show who the body part belongs to. It literally translates as 'That thought went to me through the head.'
The English translation says 'mind', but doesn't Kopf mean 'head'?
Exactly! German often uses der Kopf (the head) in idioms where English uses 'mind'. The phrase jemandem durch den Kopf gehen (to go through someone's head) is the standard German way to say something 'crossed your mind' or 'went through your mind'.
Gedanke is a masculine noun, so why does it end in -e here?
Der Gedanke (the thought) is one of a few special masculine nouns that end in -e. It belongs to a mixed declension group: it adds an -n in the accusative and dative (den/dem Gedanken), but takes an -ns in the genitive (des Gedankens). Since it is the subject (nominative) in this sentence, it stays in its base form: dieser Gedanke.
Why is the word order ging mir gestern and not ging gestern mir?
In German sentence structure, pronoun objects (like mir) almost always come before adverbs of time (like gestern). Placing the time before the pronoun object would sound very unnatural to a native speaker.
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