Breakdown of Wir reden offen über jedes Missverständnis, damit kein neuer Streit entsteht.
Questions & Answers about Wir reden offen über jedes Missverständnis, damit kein neuer Streit entsteht.
Both reden and sprechen mean to talk / to speak, but they have different tendencies:
reden
- More like to talk, to chat, to converse.
- Often used when focusing on the act of discussing something.
- Very common with über + Akkusativ:
- Wir reden über Politik. – We talk about politics.
sprechen
- More neutral / slightly more formal.
- Often used for speaking a language or having a conversation with someone:
- Ich spreche Deutsch. – I speak German.
- Ich spreche mit dir. – I speak with you.
In this sentence, you could say:
- Wir sprechen offen über jedes Missverständnis, damit kein neuer Streit entsteht.
That would be correct and natural. Using reden makes it sound just a bit more like “we openly talk things out” – a little more conversational in tone.
In German, adverbs usually stand close to the verb they modify, often directly before or after it. With reden, the most natural position for offen is right after the conjugated verb:
- Wir reden offen über jedes Missverständnis.
This is similar to English: “We talk openly about…” (not “We openly talk about…” – although in English both orders are possible).
Other examples:
- Er spricht ehrlich mit ihr. – He speaks honestly with her.
- Sie diskutieren offen über ihre Probleme. – They discuss their problems openly.
Putting offen somewhere else, like Wir offen reden über…, would sound wrong; reden offen is the right pairing, and then the rest of the sentence follows.
Both reden über and reden von exist, but they’re used a bit differently:
reden über + Akkusativ
- Neutral, very common.
- Means to talk about a topic.
- Slight nuance of discussing it in some detail.
- Wir reden über jedes Missverständnis. – We talk about every misunderstanding.
reden von + Dativ
- Often used when you mention something or when something is referred to.
- Sometimes a bit looser, not necessarily an in-depth discussion.
- Er redet immer von seinem Urlaub. – He’s always talking about his vacation.
In this sentence, the idea is that they discuss misunderstandings to clear them up, so über + Akkusativ fits best: über jedes Missverständnis.
The preposition über with the meaning about almost always takes the Akkusativ case:
- über + Akkusativ:
- Wir reden über das Problem. – We talk about the problem.
- Sie spricht über ihre Kindheit. – She talks about her childhood.
So you need the Akkusativ form of the article:
- jedes Missverständnis
- das Missverständnis (nominative/accusative singular)
- With jed- (meaning “every”), the neuter Akkusativ is jedes.
Dativ (jedem) would be used with prepositions like mit, von, bei, etc., or with verbs that require Dativ, but über (in this sense) is not one of them.
Compare:
- Wir reden über jedes Missverständnis. – Akkusativ (correct here)
- Wir reden von jedem Missverständnis. – Dativ (also possible, but different preposition and slightly different nuance, see previous answer).
Missverständnis means misunderstanding.
It’s a compound noun:
- miss-
- A prefix meaning wrongly, badly, incorrectly (similar to English mis-).
- Verständnis
- From verstehen = to understand
- das Verständnis = understanding (as a noun)
So das Missverständnis literally is a wrong understanding → a misunderstanding.
damit introduces a final clause, a clause of purpose: so that / in order that.
- damit kein neuer Streit entsteht
= so that no new argument arises / in order that no new dispute arises
damit is used when the purpose clause has its own subject:
- Wir reden, damit kein neuer Streit entsteht.
- Subject in main clause: wir
- Subject in subordinate clause: kein neuer Streit (3rd person singular)
Compare with um … zu, which you use when the subject is the same in both parts:
- Wir reden, um Missverständnisse zu klären.
- Subject in both clauses is wir.
- Literally: “We talk in order to clear up misunderstandings.”
You cannot use um … zu when the subordinate clause has a different subject, so here damit is the correct choice.
In German subordinate clauses (Nebensätze) introduced by words like dass, weil, wenn, damit, the conjugated verb normally goes to the end of the clause.
- Marker of a subordinate clause: damit
- Word order inside the clause:
- Subject + rest + verb at the end
So:
- damit (marker)
- kein neuer Streit (subject + adjectives)
- entsteht (conjugated verb at the end)
Other examples:
- … weil er keine Zeit hat. – because he has no time.
- … dass sie das Problem versteht. – that she understands the problem.
- … damit wir pünktlich ankommen. – so that we arrive on time.
In the main clause, the verb is in second position (Wir reden offen …), but in the damit-clause, the verb goes to the end.
You need to apply correct adjective endings after kein.
- Streit is masculine: der Streit.
- In the damit-clause, kein neuer Streit is the subject, so it’s in Nominativ.
- For a masculine Nominativ singular noun with a “kein”-word in front, the adjective ending is -er:
- kein neuer Streit – no new argument
- Pattern (masculine, Nominativ): kein + -er + noun
If it were Akkusativ masculine, the ending would change to -en:
- Wir wollen keinen neuen Streit. – We don’t want a new argument.
- keinen neuen Streit (Akkusativ maskulin)
So kein neuer Streit (Nominativ) is correct here because it’s the subject of entsteht (“arises”).
Streit is a fairly general word meaning disagreement, argument, quarrel, conflict. The exact English translation depends on context:
- Vocal disagreement / argument:
- Wir hatten gestern einen Streit. – We had an argument yesterday.
- Ongoing conflict:
- Der Streit zwischen den Nachbarn dauert schon lange. – The conflict between the neighbors has been going on for a long time.
In this sentence, kein neuer Streit entsteht suggests no new argument / no new conflict arises. It can be emotional, verbal, not necessarily physical. For a physical fight, you’d more likely see words like Kampf, Schlägerei, etc.
Wir reden offen über jedes Missverständnis is much more natural and idiomatic.
German word order inside the “middle field” (between the conjugated verb and the end of the clause) is flexible, but some orders are strongly preferred:
- Adverbs that describe manner (how?) like offen, ehrlich, gern tend to come relatively close to the verb.
- Prepositional phrases like über jedes Missverständnis (about every misunderstanding) often come after that.
So:
- Very natural: Wir reden offen über jedes Missverständnis.
- Possible but marked / unusual: Wir reden über jedes Missverständnis offen.
- This might be used for emphasis, but it sounds off in neutral context.
For everyday speech and writing, stick to:
- Wir reden offen über …
Yes, that’s perfectly correct and quite natural.
German allows you to place the subordinate clause before the main clause:
- Wir reden offen über jedes Missverständnis, damit kein neuer Streit entsteht.
- Damit kein neuer Streit entsteht, reden wir offen über jedes Missverständnis.
In both cases:
- The damit-clause is subordinate, so its verb is at the end (entsteht).
- In the main clause, the conjugated verb (reden) must remain in second position:
- First element: the whole damit-clause.
- Second element: reden.
So the fronted version is grammatically fine and often used for stylistic variation or emphasis on the purpose.