Breakdown of In den Nachrichten höre ich das Wort „Demokratie“ fast jeden Tag.
Questions & Answers about In den Nachrichten höre ich das Wort „Demokratie“ fast jeden Tag.
The preposition in can take either the dative or the accusative in German:
- Dative = location (where something happens)
- Accusative = movement (where something is going)
In this sentence, you are talking about where you hear the word: in den Nachrichten = in the news (location), so you need the dative plural.
- die Nachrichten (nominative plural) → den Nachrichten (dative plural)
You would use the accusative only if there were movement into the news, e.g., in die Nachrichten gehen = to go into the news, but that’s a different meaning.
In German, die Nachricht means a message / a piece of news.
The word for news (as in the media: TV news, radio news) is almost always used in the plural:
- die Nachrichten = the news broadcast(s), literally: the messages
So In den Nachrichten is best understood as “in the news (programmes)”. English treats news as an uncountable singular, but German thinks of it as many separate Nachrichten, so it’s grammatically plural.
den Nachrichten is dative plural.
You can see this because:
- The basic form is die Nachrichten (nominative plural).
- With many prepositions of location (like in when it means “in/inside”), German uses the dative:
- in + die Nachrichten → in den Nachrichten (dative plural)
Clues:
- den is the dative plural article for all genders.
- Many plural nouns add -n in the dative if they don’t already end in -n → Nachrichten already has -en, so it stays the same.
German main clauses must have the finite verb in second position (V2 rule). But “second position” means second element, not second word.
In this sentence, In den Nachrichten is one long first element (an adverbial phrase: in the news). So the verb must come next:
- First element: In den Nachrichten
- Second element (the verb): höre
- Then the subject: ich
So: In den Nachrichten höre ich …
If you start with the subject instead, you also get a correct sentence:
- Ich höre in den Nachrichten das Wort Demokratie fast jeden Tag.
Both are correct. The original version just emphasizes In the news by putting it first.
Yes, absolutely. That’s a perfectly correct and quite neutral word order:
- Ich höre in den Nachrichten das Wort Demokratie fast jeden Tag.
Meaning and grammar are the same. The difference is in emphasis:
In den Nachrichten höre ich …
→ Focus on in the news (as opposed to somewhere else).Ich höre in den Nachrichten …
→ More neutral; starting with the subject “I”.
Using das Wort Demokratie emphasizes that you are hearing the word itself, not seeing or experiencing democracy as an abstract concept.
- Ich höre Demokratie would sound strange, because you can’t really hear democracy, only the word.
- Ich höre das Wort Demokratie makes it clear that you’re talking about the lexical item — the spoken or written word.
This structure is common in German:
- Ich kenne das Wort Freiheit. – I know the word freedom.
- Ich verstehe das Wort Ironie nicht. – I don’t understand the word irony.
Wort is a neuter noun in German:
- das Wort (nominative / accusative singular)
In the sentence, das Wort Demokratie is the direct object of the verb höre (what do I hear?) → so it’s in the accusative case:
- Ich höre (wen/was?) das Wort Demokratie.
→ Accusative neuter singular: das Wort
In German, all nouns are capitalized, regardless of where they appear in the sentence.
- Wort is a common noun → capitalized.
- Demokratie is also a noun → capitalized.
This is different from English, where only proper nouns and the first word of a sentence are usually capitalized.
In the original sentence you saw „Demokratie“. That’s because German often uses quotation marks to highlight:
- a word as a word (metalinguistic use), or
- a word someone is saying or hearing
Here, the quotation marks show that Demokratie is being talked about as a word itself, not as the political system. In explanations like this, we often just write it in bold (Demokratie) instead of quotes, but in normal German text you’ll see:
- „Demokratie“ in German-style quotes.
fast here means almost:
- fast jeden Tag = almost every day
Word order:
Time expressions often go from more specific to less specific, but in practice, fast jeden Tag is treated as one chunk and usually placed after the objects but before other longer information:
- Ich höre das Wort Demokratie fast jeden Tag.
You wouldn’t normally split it:
- ❌ jeden fast Tag – wrong / unidiomatic
- ✅ fast jeden Tag – correct
höre is present tense (Präsens), 1st person singular of hören.
In German, the present tense often covers the meanings that English has for:
- simple present: I hear
- present continuous: I am hearing
So Ich höre das Wort Demokratie fast jeden Tag naturally means “I (regularly) hear the word ‘democracy’ almost every day.” It clearly expresses a habitual action.
Approximate pronunciation (IPA + description):
Nachrichten – /ˈnaːxʁɪçtən/
- Na – like “nah”, with a long a
- ch after a → /x/, like the harsh ch in Scottish loch
- ri – like “ri” in ribbon (short i)
- second ch after i → /ç/, a softer “hissing” ch, like in ich
- ten – roughly “ten” with a schwa: tən
Demokratie – /demoˈkʁaːtiː/
- De – “deh”
- mo – like “mo” in moment
- kra – “krah” with a long a
- tie – “tee”, long iː
Stress:
- NÁCHrichten – stress on the first syllable
- DemoKRATÍE – main stress on the last syllable -tie
Both fast and beinahe can mean almost, and in this sentence they are essentially interchangeable:
- Ich höre das Wort Demokratie fast jeden Tag.
- Ich höre das Wort Demokratie beinahe jeden Tag.
fast is more common and sounds a bit more neutral and everyday.
beinahe can sound slightly more formal or literary, but the difference is subtle; in normal speech, fast is the default choice.