Breakdown of Der Jugendliche spielt im Park.
Questions & Answers about Der Jugendliche spielt im Park.
Jugendliche means young person / adolescent / teenager.
A few nuances:
- der Jugendliche = a male teenager / young man
- die Jugendliche = a female teenager / young woman
- die Jugendlichen = teenagers (plural, all genders)
It’s a general word, like young person, and doesn’t sound slangy the way teen can in English.
Because the sentence is talking about a male young person.
- der Jugendliche = masculine, singular
- die Jugendliche = feminine, singular
- die Jugendlichen = plural (any mix of genders)
The word Jugendliche itself doesn’t have a fixed gender; the article (der / die) tells you whether it’s male or female in the singular.
In German, all nouns are capitalized.
Here, Jugendliche is used as a noun (it refers to a person), so it must be written with a capital J.
Park is also a noun, so it is capitalized too: der Park.
Because Jugendliche is actually an adjective (jugendlich = youthful) being used as a noun. These are sometimes called nominalized adjectives.
When that happens, the ending changes like an adjective, not like a normal noun:
- masculine, nominative, singular with der → der Jugendliche
- accusative masculine: den Jugendlichen
- dative masculine: dem Jugendlichen
So der Jugendlicher would be grammatically wrong; it has to be der Jugendliche.
The infinitive is spielen (to play), but the verb must agree with the subject: der Jugendliche = he.
Conjugation of spielen in the present tense:
- ich spiele – I play
- du spielst – you (singular, informal) play
- er/sie/es spielt – he/she/it plays
- wir spielen – we play
- ihr spielt – you (plural, informal) play
- sie/Sie spielen – they / you (formal) play
Since der Jugendliche is he, you use er spielt → der Jugendliche spielt.
German main clauses normally follow a verb-second rule (V2):
- One element in first position (here: Der Jugendliche)
- The finite verb in second position (here: spielt)
- Everything else after that (im Park)
So:
- Der Jugendliche – position 1 (subject)
- spielt – position 2 (finite verb)
- im Park – rest of the sentence
This is why spielt comes right after the subject.
im is a contraction of in dem:
- in = in
- dem = the (dative, masculine or neuter)
- in dem Park → im Park
German often contracts preposition + article:
- in dem → im
- an dem → am
- bei dem → beim, etc.
So im Park literally means in the park (with Park in the dative case).
The preposition in can take dative or accusative, depending on meaning:
- Dative = location (where something is) → Wo?
- Accusative = movement into (where something is going to) → Wohin?
In this sentence, the teenager is playing in the park (location, no movement into it is expressed), so you use dative:
- in + dem Park = im Park
If you wanted to say He is going into the park, you’d use the accusative:
- Er geht in den Park.
Yes, in dem Park is grammatically correct and means the same thing.
However, in normal spoken and written German, the contracted form im Park is much more common and sounds more natural.
Yes, that’s correct German.
- Im Park is now in the first position.
- The verb spielt must still be second.
- der Jugendliche comes after it.
So both are fine:
- Der Jugendliche spielt im Park. – neutral, subject-focused.
- Im Park spielt der Jugendliche. – puts more emphasis on where he plays.
You use the plural:
- Die Jugendlichen spielen im Park.
Changes compared to the original:
- Die Jugendlichen = plural
- Verb plural: spielen instead of spielt.
- im Park stays the same.