German word order

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German word order is not as easy as in English or Romance languages.
The following ten rules can make your life easier. The first two are the basic rules, on which everything else is based.

1. The normal word order is subject - conjugated verb - object - adverbials - other object - verb prefix/complements - subordinate phrase.
2. If something is extracted to the beginning of the sentence (usually to emphasize it), the conjugated verb moves to the beginning of the remaining clause.
3. Wh-questions are treated as statements, where the question word is extracted to the beginning (if it is not the subject anyway).
4. Questions without a question word have the word order mentioned in rule 2, although nothing is extracted.
5. In an imperative sentence, the word order is like in rule 4. The subject is dropped if the informal 2nd person ("du/ihr") is used.
6. If there is both an accusative and a dative object, the dative object usually comes first. However, when the accusative object is only a pronoun, it comes first.
7. A negation comes right after the adverbials. "kein" is treated like an article, i.e. it is a part of the subject or an object. Words like "nichts" and "niemand" take the place of the grammatical function they occupy.
8. Adverbials come in the order temporal (time) - local (place) - modal (manner). More general time expressions precede more specific ones.
9. In a subordinate phrase, the conjugated verb comes at the end (possibly preceded by "zu").
10. A relative clause (with the word order described in rule 9) comes right after the subject or object it describes.

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