Questions & Answers about Die Müdigkeit macht mich heute langsam.
Why is Müdigkeit capitalized, and why does it take die?
In German, all nouns are capitalized, regardless of their position in the sentence.
Müdigkeit is a noun meaning tiredness / fatigue, so it must be written with a capital M.
Every German noun has a grammatical gender.
Müdigkeit happens to be feminine, so in the nominative singular it takes the article die:
- die Müdigkeit – the tiredness/fatigue (subject form)
So Die Müdigkeit is simply “tiredness/fatigue” as the subject of the sentence.
What role does Die Müdigkeit play in the sentence?
Die Müdigkeit is the subject of the sentence – the thing that is doing the action of the verb.
Sentence structure:
- Die Müdigkeit → subject (nominative)
- macht → verb
- mich → direct object (accusative)
- heute → adverb of time
- langsam → predicative adjective/adverb (“slow” / “slowly”)
So the literal structure is:
Tiredness / The fatigue makes me slow today.
Why is it macht mich langsam and not something like macht mich langsam sein?