Questions & Answers about Die Ursache ist noch unbekannt.
In German, every noun has a grammatical gender. Ursache is:
- feminine (die Ursache – the cause)
- therefore it always takes the article die in the nominative singular
In this sentence, Ursache is the subject of the sentence, so it’s in the nominative case:
- Die Ursache (subject, nominative)
- ist (verb)
- noch unbekannt (predicate/adjectival complement)
You would see der Ursache in the dative singular, for example:
- wegen der Ursache – because of the cause
- an der Ursache – at/on the cause
But as a plain subject, it’s die Ursache.
In German, all nouns are capitalized, no matter where they appear in the sentence.
- Die Ursache ist noch unbekannt.
- Diese Ursache kenne ich nicht.
- Von der Ursache habe ich noch nie gehört.
So Ursache is capitalized simply because it’s a noun, not for emphasis or any special reason.
After forms of sein (bin, bist, ist, sind, seid, war, waren, etc.) adjectives usually stand as predicate adjectives and appear in their basic form without endings:
- Die Ursache ist unbekannt. – The cause is unknown.
- Das Wetter ist schön. – The weather is nice.
- Der Film war langweilig. – The movie was boring.
You only add endings when the adjective directly describes a noun:
- die unbekannte Ursache – the unknown cause
- ein schöner Tag – a nice day
- der langweilige Film – the boring movie
So:
sein + Adjective (no ending) → predicate (state)
Article/Determiner + Adjective + Noun → adjective gets an ending
noch here means “still”.
Die Ursache ist unbekannt. – The cause is unknown.
(neutral statement; no time aspect)Die Ursache ist noch unbekannt. – The cause is still unknown.
(implies: it might become known later; up to now, we don’t know it)
So noch suggests a temporary state that is expected or at least possible to change in the future.
The natural place for noch in this sentence is before the adjective:
- Die Ursache ist noch unbekannt.
Putting noch at the end (Die Ursache ist unbekannt noch) is not idiomatic standard German; it sounds wrong.
Typical pattern with sein + adjective + noch:
- Das Problem ist noch groß. – The problem is still big.
- Die Tür ist noch offen. – The door is still open.
- Die Ursache ist noch unbekannt. – The cause is still unknown.
You can move noch toward the beginning for emphasis, but then the word order around the verb changes:
- Noch ist die Ursache unbekannt. – The cause is still unknown (emphasis on “still” / “not yet”).
They are very close in meaning, but there are some nuances:
unbekannt
- a single word, sounds more formal/standard in many contexts
- often used in news, reports, official statements
- Die Ursache ist noch unbekannt.
nicht bekannt
- literally “not known”; often sounds a bit more neutral / matter-of-fact
- sometimes used when explicitly negating bekannt
- Die Ursache ist (der Polizei) nicht bekannt.
– The cause is not known (to the police).
In many cases you can use either, but in fixed phrases and headlines, unbekannt is more common:
- aus unbekannter Ursache – for an unknown reason
- die Ursache ist noch unbekannt – the cause is still unknown
In this sentence, die Ursache is a clear, concrete subject, so German doesn’t need a dummy es:
- Die Ursache ist noch unbekannt.
Subject = Die Ursache
You would use es as a dummy subject when the real subject comes later or is more abstract:
- Es ist noch unbekannt, was die Ursache war.
– It is still unknown what the cause was.
There, es fills the subject position, and the real content comes later in the clause “was die Ursache war”.
Yes. The plural of die Ursache is die Ursachen. The verb and adjective must agree:
- Die Ursachen sind noch unbekannt.
– The causes are still unknown.
Changes:
- die Ursache → die Ursachen (plural subject)
- ist → sind (3rd person plural)
- unbekannt stays the same, because it’s still a predicate adjective after sein and does not take an ending.
Yes, that’s correct German and quite common, especially in written language or news style:
Die Ursache ist noch unbekannt.
– Neutral word order, standard statement.Noch ist die Ursache unbekannt.
– Same meaning, but emphasis on “Noch” (still / not yet).
It sounds a bit more dramatic or stylistically marked, often used in reports, narratives, or to highlight that the situation could change soon.
Grammatically, this is just normal verb-second (V2) word order:
- Noch (first position)
- ist (finite verb, second)
- die Ursache (subject)
- unbekannt (rest)
German often uses the present tense to describe the current state of knowledge about something, even if the event itself is in the past:
- Gestern gab es einen Unfall. Die Ursache ist noch unbekannt.
– Yesterday there was an accident. The cause is still unknown.
The accident is in the past, but our knowledge state now is present: the cause is still unknown.
If you wanted to emphasize that the cause was unknown at some earlier point (in the past), you’d use war:
- Die Ursache war gestern noch unbekannt.
– The cause was still unknown yesterday.
Both can mean “cause” or “reason”, but they are used somewhat differently:
Ursache
- more technical, often used for causes of events, especially physical, medical, technical, etc.
- Die Ursache des Brandes ist noch unbekannt.
– The cause of the fire is still unknown.
Grund
- often used for reasons/motives, especially emotional, personal, or explanatory
- Der Grund ist noch unbekannt. – The reason is still unknown.
- Ich kenne den Grund nicht. – I don’t know the reason.
In your sentence, Die Ursache ist noch unbekannt is especially natural if you’re talking about things like an accident, breakdown, illness, fire, etc., where people are investigating the cause.