Learn Hardcore German: Ich lege meine Isomatte neben deine, damit wir in der Nacht dicht beieinander liegen. - I put my sleeping mat next to yours so that we lie close together at night.

German often drops a noun when it’s clear from context and just leaves the possessive pronoun, which then works like mine / yours / his / hers in English.

meine Isomatte = my sleeping mat
deine (Isomatte) = your (sleeping mat) → yours

The full version would be:

Ich lege meine Isomatte neben deine Isomatte.

Since Isomatte would just be repeated, it’s omitted the second time, but the possessive (deine) keeps the same ending it would have before Isomatte (here: feminine accusative singular -e).

What case are meine Isomatte and deine in, and why?

Both are in the accusative case.

meine Isomatte is the direct object of legen:
- Ich lege was? – meine Isomatte. → accusative.
neben is a two-way preposition (Wechselpräposition). With movement towards a place, it takes the accusative:
- Ich lege meine Isomatte wohin? – neben deine (Isomatte).
  → destination, so neben
  - accusative.

So we have:

die Isomatte → accusative singular feminine: die Isomatte
possessive + feminine accusative: meine Isomatte, deine (Isomatte)

Why do we use lege first and liegen later? What’s the difference between legen and liegen?

German distinguishes very clearly between:

legen – to lay / to put something down (active placement, takes an object)
- Ich lege meine Isomatte hin. = I lay/put down my mat.
liegen – to lie / to be lying (position, no object)
- Die Isomatte liegt auf dem Boden. = The mat is lying on the floor.

In the sentence:

Ich lege meine Isomatte … → I actively put it somewhere.
…, damit wir … liegen. → later, we are in a lying position.

So the structure is:

now: I lay the mat.
result/purpose: later we lie close together.

How does damit work here, and why not just weil or so dass?

damit is a subordinating conjunction that introduces a purpose clause: in order that / so that.

Ich lege meine Isomatte neben deine, damit wir … liegen.
→ I put my mat next to yours so that we lie close together.

Nuances:

damit = purpose or intention (the reason with a goal):
- You did X in order to achieve Y.
weil = cause, simple reason:
- Ich lege meine Isomatte neben deine, weil ich dicht bei dir liegen will.
  → because I want to lie close to you.
so dass (often written sodass) = result, often more like a consequence:
- Ich lege meine Isomatte neben deine, so dass wir dicht beieinander liegen.
  → I put it there, with the result that we lie close together.

In your sentence, the focus is on intention, so damit is the most natural.

Why does the verb liegen go to the end of the damit clause?

damit starts a subordinate clause. In German subordinate clauses, the finite verb goes to the end.

Main clause (verb in 2nd position):
- Ich (1) lege (2) meine Isomatte neben deine (rest).
Subordinate clause after damit (verb at the end):
- damit (0) wir (1) in der Nacht dicht beieinander (middle field) liegen (final position).

That verb-final order is standard for all conjunctions like dass, weil, wenn, obwohl, damit, bevor, nachdem, etc.

Could we also say …, um in der Nacht dicht beieinander zu liegen instead of damit wir in der Nacht dicht beieinander liegen?

Yes, grammatically that’s fine and very natural:

Ich lege meine Isomatte neben deine, um in der Nacht dicht beieinander zu liegen.

Comparison:

damit wir … liegen
- full clause with its own subject (wir) and finite verb (liegen).
um … zu liegen
- non-finite construction, no separate subject (it’s understood to be the same as in the main clause).

Both express purpose. The um … zu version sounds a bit more compact and is common when the subject of both actions is the same (here it is partly overlapping: ich lege vs wir liegen, but it still works because “I” is included in “we”).

Why is it in der Nacht and not in die Nacht?

The preposition in is another two-way preposition:

in
- dative → location (where?)
in
- accusative → direction (into where?).

Here, in der Nacht means “during the night / at night” – a time expression, not movement into something.

Wann liegen wir dicht beieinander? – in der Nacht.
→ static time; therefore dative: der Nacht.

in die Nacht would describe movement into a time period or literal space (very rare in a temporal sense; something like “to go (off) into the night”), which is not what’s meant here.

Why is it neben deine and not neben dir?

They mean different things:

neben deine (Isomatte) → next to your mat (object).
neben dir → next to you (your body/person).

Grammatically:

neben deine (Isomatte)
- We’re talking about the Isomatte, which is feminine.
- Movement towards a place → neben
  - accusative:
    - neben deine Isomatte → accusative feminine: deine.
neben dir
- dir is the dative form of du.
- If we said: Ich lege meine Isomatte neben dir, this would normally be understood as “I put my mat right next to your body”, not next to your mat.

So in the given sentence, we want beside your mat, not beside you directly, so neben deine (Isomatte) is correct.

What exactly does dicht beieinander mean?

Literally:

dicht = close(ly), tightly
beieinander = next to each other / together / side by side

Together, dicht beieinander means:

very close together / packed closely / right next to each other.

In the context of people lying down, dicht beieinander liegen suggests they’re lying very close, almost touching or with little space between them. It’s stronger than simply nebeneinander liegen (“lying next to each other”) because dicht adds the idea of closeness or compactness.

Is beieinander one word or two? And where does dicht go?

In modern spelling, beieinander is written as one word.

Historically it comes from bei einander (“at each other / with each other”), but that’s no longer how it’s written in standard German.

As for dicht, it normally comes before beieinander:

dicht beieinander sitzen / stehen / liegen

You wouldn’t normally say beieinander dicht liegen; dicht beieinander is the idiomatic chunk.

Why does the sentence use present tense liegen when it’s about the future (at night)?

German often uses the present tense for future events when there is a clear time expression:

Morgen fahre ich nach Berlin.
→ I’m going to Berlin tomorrow.
Nächsten Sommer arbeiten wir in Österreich.
→ Next summer we’ll work in Austria.

In your sentence:

in der Nacht specifies the future time.
liegen is in the present, but it’s understood as future because of that time phrase.

Using werden is possible but less natural here:

…, damit wir in der Nacht dicht beieinander liegen werden.
→ grammatically OK but sounds heavier and unnecessary in everyday speech.

So present + time expression is the default way to talk about many future situations in German.

Could the word order in the damit clause be different, like damit wir dicht beieinander in der Nacht liegen?

Yes, some variation inside the middle of the clause is possible. All of these are grammatical:

damit wir in der Nacht dicht beieinander liegen (neutral, natural)
damit wir dicht beieinander in der Nacht liegen (slight emphasis on dicht beieinander as a unit)
damit wir dicht beieinander in der Nacht liegen vs
damit wir in der Nacht dicht beieinander liegen → both acceptable.

Typical preference:

Time (in der Nacht)
Manner / degree (dicht beieinander)
Place (if there was a specific place)

But in practice, time and manner can swap without changing the meaning much. What you cannot change is the verb-final position:

✗ damit wir liegen in der Nacht dicht beieinander → wrong.

Why is Isomatte feminine? Is there a rule that tells me that?

Isomatte is feminine: die Isomatte.

Unfortunately, German noun gender is partly arbitrary and must often simply be memorized. However, there are some patterns:

Many nouns ending in -e are feminine:
- die Lampe, die Tasche, die Decke, die Matte.
Isomatte is built from Iso- (from Isolierung, insulation) + Matte.
The base noun Matte is feminine (die Matte), so Isomatte is also feminine.

So while you can’t always predict gender perfectly from the form, recognizing common endings like -e, -ung, -heit, -keit, -schaft helps a lot, and here -matte → feminine is consistent.