Breakdown of Die Kellnerin lächelt uns im Café freundlich an.
Questions & Answers about Die Kellnerin lächelt uns im Café freundlich an.
The base verb here is anlächeln (to smile at someone).
It’s a separable-prefix verb:
- anlächeln → an (prefix) + lächeln (to smile)
- In a main clause with the verb in position 2, the prefix goes to the end of the sentence:
- Die Kellnerin lächelt uns im Café freundlich an.
- In infinitive or at the end of a subordinate clause, it stays together:
- … weil die Kellnerin uns im Café freundlich anlächelt.
The prefix an- in anlächeln roughly adds the idea of directed at someone: to smile at (someone), not just to smile in general.
Wir and uns are forms of the same pronoun (we), but in different cases:
- wir = nominative (subject)
- uns = accusative or dative (object)
In the sentence:
- Die Kellnerin = subject (who is doing the smiling) → nominative
- uns = object (who is being smiled at) → accusative
Because we are the ones being smiled at, not the ones doing the action, German uses the object form: uns, not wir.
You have to know which case the verb requires.
The verb is anlächeln (to smile at someone). It takes a direct object in the accusative:
- jemanden anlächeln = to smile at someone
So for the pronoun:
- jemanden → uns (accusative we/us)
- Not dative (wem?), but accusative (wen?)
If it were a dative verb (for example helfen – to help someone), you’d use uns as dative. Here it’s accusative because anlächeln behaves like a regular verb that takes a direct object (whom does she smile at? us).
im is a contraction of:
- in (in) + dem (the, dative singular masculine/neuter)
- in dem Café → im Café
German does this very often:
- in dem → im
- an dem → am
- zu dem → zum
- bei dem → beim
Café here is treated as neuter (das Café), so after the preposition in (with a location meaning), it goes into the dative: in dem Café → im Café.
Two things:
Capitalization:
In German, all nouns are capitalized. Café is a noun, so it’s written with a capital C.Accent:
Café is a loanword from French. German often keeps the accent in this word:- das Café = a café / coffee shop
- der Kaffee = coffee (the drink), written without an accent and with -ee
So:
- im Café = in the café (place)
- der Kaffee = the coffee (beverage)
Kellner and Kellnerin are masculine/feminine versions of the same job:
- der Kellner = (male) waiter
- die Kellnerin = (female) waitress
The article die here is nominative singular feminine, matching Kellnerin.
So the sentence specifically says that a female server is smiling: Die Kellnerin …
In this sentence, freundlich is an adverb, not an attributive adjective.
- It describes how she smiles: she smiles *friendly / in a friendly way*.
- In German, adverbs usually have no ending; they look like the basic form of the adjective:
- Sie spricht laut. (She speaks loudly.)
- Er arbeitet fleißig. (He works diligently.)
- Die Kellnerin lächelt freundlich an. (The waitress smiles in a friendly way.)
You add endings (freundliche, freundlicher, freundlichem, etc.) when the word directly describes a noun in front of it:
- die freundliche Kellnerin (the friendly waitress)
Here freundliche is an adjective modifying Kellnerin, so it gets an ending.
German word order in the middle field (between the finite verb and the separable prefix) is flexible, but there are preferences.
Original:
- Die Kellnerin lächelt uns im Café freundlich an.
Other natural options:
- Die Kellnerin lächelt uns freundlich im Café an.
- Die Kellnerin lächelt im Café uns freundlich an. (less typical, but possible in certain emphasis)
General tendencies:
- Pronouns (like uns) usually come before full nouns and many adverbials.
- Time–manner–place is a common guideline, but not a strict rule.
The original order sounds very natural: subject – verb – pronoun – place – manner – prefix.
Yes. You can change the topic of the sentence by moving im Café to the front. But German still keeps the finite verb in position 2, so it looks like this:
- Im Café lächelt die Kellnerin uns freundlich an.
Word-by-word:
- Im Café (topic / setting)
- lächelt (verb in position 2)
- die Kellnerin (subject)
- uns freundlich an (rest of the information)
This version emphasizes the location more: In the café, the waitress smiles at us kindly.
Normally, no. That would sound incomplete or wrong to a native speaker.
- lächeln alone = to smile (in general, not necessarily directed at someone)
- anlächeln = to smile at someone (directed at a person)
If you keep the object uns, you need an at the end, because the verb is anlächeln:
- ✅ Die Kellnerin lächelt uns im Café freundlich an.
- ❌ Die Kellnerin lächelt uns im Café freundlich. (feels incomplete)
If you remove the object, you can drop an:
- Die Kellnerin lächelt im Café freundlich.
= The waitress is smiling friendly in the café. (general smiling, not at us specifically)
This follows common German pronoun placement rules.
Preferred order:
- Subject (Die Kellnerin)
- Finite verb (lächelt)
- Pronoun objects (uns)
- Other information (place, manner, time…) → im Café, freundlich
- Separable prefix at the end (an)
So:
- Die Kellnerin lächelt uns im Café freundlich an.
If you use a full noun instead of uns, the position is more flexible:
- Die Kellnerin lächelt die Gäste im Café freundlich an.
- Die Kellnerin lächelt im Café die Gäste freundlich an.
With pronouns, German strongly prefers them as early as possible in the middle field, before most adverbials.
Café is in the dative case in this sentence.
How to see it:
- The preposition in can take accusative (direction) or dative (location).
- Here the meaning is location (in the café → where?), so dative is used.
- das Café (nominative/accusative singular) becomes dem Café in dative.
- in dem Café is then contracted to im Café.
So Café is:
- Neuter noun: das Café
- Dative singular after in (location): in dem Café → im Café