Ein Wunder ist ein Ereignis, das von Leuten beschrieben wird, denen es erzählt wurde von Leuten, die es nicht gesehen haben.

Sentence Discussions German
#1

This is one of those sentences where the differences in word order relative to English make it hard for me to intuitively unpack the meaning. I totally get how it fits together when I think about it, but it isn’t fully natural or intuitive to me to understand it when reading or hearing it at normal speeds.

I wonder if there is a good way I can get better at quickly parsing these sorts of constructions mentally? I find it tricky to practice this sort of thing because I don’t encounter these complex sentences all that frequently so it’s hard to get practice in them.

#2

Or is this sentence just confusing even to native speakers?

#3

I’d think that is constructed as complicated on purpose, for whatever reason.

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#4

Reminds me of being assigned to read Michel Foucault during a political science course my first semester in college. I loved the class overall but I absolutely hate that man and I think he has no business ever putting words on a page.

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