Breakdown of Wenn ich meinem Arbeitgeber ehrlich sage, dass ich keine Überstunden mehr schaffe, versteht er mich vielleicht.
Questions & Answers about Wenn ich meinem Arbeitgeber ehrlich sage, dass ich keine Überstunden mehr schaffe, versteht er mich vielleicht.
In German, most subordinate clauses (introduced by words like wenn, weil, dass, etc.) send the conjugated verb to the end of that clause.
So Wenn ich meinem Arbeitgeber ehrlich sage, ... has sage at the end of the wenn-clause.
It can mean either, depending on context. In this sentence it’s best understood as a conditional if:
If I honestly tell my employer ..., he might understand me.
German often uses wenn for both time and condition; English separates them more clearly.
Because sagen commonly takes:
- a dative person (who you tell something to)
- and the “something” you tell (often a clause like dass ...)
So jemandem (Dat.) etwas sagen → meinem Arbeitgeber is dative (masculine singular: dem Arbeitgeber).
It’s the content of what you say—the object of sage.
German often expresses “what is being said/thought/known” with a dass-clause, and that clause is treated like the “thing” you’re telling.
German uses commas more strictly than English:
- A comma separates the wenn-clause from the rest.
- A comma is required before a dass-clause.
- And since the dass-clause ends before the main clause continues, you close it with another comma:
Wenn ..., dass ..., versteht ...
Because the sentence starts with a subordinate clause (Wenn ...). When that happens, the following main clause still must follow the V2 rule (the conjugated verb is in position 2).
So the main clause begins like this:
1) the entire Wenn-clause (counts as position 1)
2) versteht (verb)
then the subject er comes after the verb.
schaffen has a very common meaning: to manage / to cope / to be able to do (something), especially in everyday speech.
Here, (Überstunden) schaffen means to manage overtime / to cope with doing overtime, not “to create overtime.”
Überstunden is typically used in the plural when talking about “doing overtime” in general (countable overtime hours).
Using singular would sound unusual in this context.
keine ... mehr means no ... anymore / not any ... anymore (zero quantity going forward).
Compare:
- Ich mache keine Überstunden mehr. = I do no overtime anymore.
- Ich mache nicht mehr Überstunden. = I don’t do overtime anymore (more general; could be interpreted differently depending on emphasis).
For count nouns like Überstunden, keine ... mehr is very natural.
It’s an adverb modifying sage (“tell honestly”). German adverbs are flexible, but placing ehrlich before the verb (and fairly late in the clause) is a common, neutral choice:
... ehrlich sage = “tell honestly / tell the truth.”
vielleicht modifies the whole main clause: he might / maybe he will understand me.
German often places sentence adverbs like vielleicht later in the clause (including near the end) for a natural flow.
Yes. Using würde can make it sound more explicitly hypothetical:
- Wenn ich meinem Arbeitgeber ehrlich sagen würde, dass ich keine Überstunden mehr schaffe, würde er mich vielleicht verstehen.
Your original sentence is still perfectly normal; it can feel like a realistic condition rather than a purely hypothetical one.