Relativsätze
"The apartment that I saw," "the man who lives here" - relative clauses let you add a whole extra fact about a noun inside one sentence, instead of two short choppy ones. This is a genuine step toward sounding natural rather than textbook-mechanical.
The pronoun's gender matches the noun it describes; its case depends on its role inside the relative clause:
Der Mann, der hier wohnt, ist mein Nachbar. (the man who lives here - subject inside the clause, nominative)
Die Wohnung, die ich gesehen habe, ist teuer. (the apartment that I saw - object inside the clause, accusative)
Full table with both cases: Reference - Relative Clauses.
Just like Lesson 26's weil-clauses, the conjugated verb inside a relative clause always moves to the very end, and the whole clause is set off with commas.
Ignore the main sentence - look only inside the relative clause. Is the noun doing the action there, or receiving it?
| Noun does the action | → nominative (der/die/das) |
| Noun receives the action | → accusative (den/die/das) |
1. "The man who lives here" - Der Mann, ______ hier wohnt.
2. "The apartment that I saw" (accusative, feminine) - Die Wohnung, ______ ich gesehen habe.
3. Where does the verb go inside a relative clause?
4. How is a relative clause set off from the rest of the sentence?
5. Which case do you use if the noun is doing the action inside the clause?
Cross-checked against the Goethe-Institut A1 practice materials.
Unsure which relative pronoun a specific sentence needs? Ask your teaching agent to check it.