Click here for a lesson about the Perfekt tense and how all of that works. Our online exercises for German help you to learn and practice grammar rules in an interactive manner. Notice that in English we use the verb form with -ing at the end with “instead of” and “without”, but an infinitive clause with “to” when we use “in order”. It is nice to meet you. Do you have a desire for us to show you the city? With Lingolia’s online lesson you can learn when to use the infinitive with zu and when to use the infinitive without zu. She claims to know my sister.Ich hoffe, meine Prüfung zu bestehen. Infinitive (um...zu) Example: Question: Ich verdiene Geld, _____. Deutschlerner: AHHHH!!! We promise to have written the essay before next Thursday. Deutschlerner: Jetzt reicht’s! Sie möchte, dass er kein Frauenhasser ist. It will have been a joy for him to see the children again. Example: Das Kind lernt laufen. Basically it is like having an extra half to a sentence that isn’t complete, as it doesn’t show who is acting, stuck to the end of another sentence. He explains the grammar to us. He hopes to have passed the test. Er hat keine Lust, ins Kino zu gehen. → Don’t run away! It was a joy for him to see the children again. You can kind of imply all of the other tenses through the main clause, for example: Es ist ihm eine Freude, die Kinder wiederzusehen. Instead it implies that the subject is the same without actually naming it. Your destination for German learning videos, worksheets and more. In German, you simply use the conjunction “dass” and you don’t need the infinitive clause for the reasons I have already mentioned. Both of them should be in the infinitive form. Again we can clearly see that the subject in each half is the same. The important thing to remember is that the subject of the first clause usually needs to be the same as the subject of the second clause. Deutschlerner: Ich sehe heute einen Film, anstatt mein Deutschbuch lesen.German Learner: I am watching a movie today instead of reading my German book. The teacher asks the students to do the homework.Der Junge lädt das Mädchen ein, ins Kino zu gehen. In English the action you want the other person to do is contained within an infinitive clause, which includes “to”. For example: Er nimmt seine Spielzeuge und geht nach Hause. Gee… thanks headline, I just said that! Wir versprechen, vor nächstem Donnerstag den Aufsatz geschrieben zu haben. It is not good to always want to eat something. Er soll zu Hause bleiben, um seine Tochter zu sehen. 1. Grammatical tense in infinitive clauses: In the above examples, the infinitive clauses contain only an indeterminate tense. I always forget to lock my car. Wir müssen die Grammatik verstehen. Get a worksheet and answer key along with an mp3 version of this lesson and a copy of the script here. If you have different subjects, this construction usually doesn’t work. You can’t really explicitly use any of the tenses except the past in an infinitive clause. The child is learning to walk. It is used as a locative preposition, temporal preposition, causal preposition, adverb and conjunction with different meanings. Er ging nach Hause, weil er geärgert wurde. In 2011 he started his successful YouTube Channel "Learn German with Herr Antrim". Tschüss. Therefore we don’t need the “zu” plus infinitive construction. It is tragic to see this man like this. In German grammar, the infinitive is often used together with a conjugated verb. The subject is not present in a dependent clause, but I thought it would be helpful to see some examples like that, too. He is the subject of both halves of the sentence, but the conjunction “und” (and) doesn’t trigger a dependent clause, so we keep the conjugated form of “gehen”, “geht”. 3. The woman helps the man to repair his car. Ich war oft in Bremen. The following verbs take the infinitive without zu: We use the infinitive with zu in connection with most other verbs. At the sight of the spider it is impossible for her not to run out of the room screaming. Es ist schön Sie zu treffen. I have not visited the Universum. When you put this into an infinitive clause, the past participle goes before “zu” and the infinitive of either “haben” or “sein” goes after it. Herr Antrim: You need “zu” in that one, too. She claims to have lost her cell phone. Depending on the verbs it follows, we use the infinitive with or without the preposition zu.