����ý

To make your German flow, you can link two clauses by using �ܳ�...����…, which means 'in order to'. This construction is sometimes referred to as the infinitive construction.

In the �ܳ�...����… clause, you must drop the subject and the verb in the second part of the clause, whatever its tense, and use an infinitive instead.

Hilfsvokabeln – Helpful vocabulary

• anrufen (v) – to ring, to phone
• stellen (v) – to put (used as eine Frage stellen – to ask a question)
• die Frage (f) – question
• die Fragen (pl) – questions
• ihm (pron) – him, to him (dative or indirect object pronoun)

Here are two sentences that can easily be linked to make one fluent-sounding sentence:

Example one

Ich rufe meinen Freund an. Ich stelle ihm eine Frage. – I ring my friend. I ask him a question.

• You're going to link the two sentences together. As you already have a subject in the first sentence (ich), you can now drop the subject (ich) in the second sentence.
• Replace the verb in the second sentence - here the first person singular form stelle - with the infinitive form stellen.
• In German, the comma matters as it separates the two ideas.

Both sentences can now be linked like this:

Ich rufe meinen Freund an, um ihm eine Frage zu stellen. – I ring my friend in order to ask him a question.

Example two

Wir warten auf den Bus. Wir fahren in die Stadt. – We are waiting for the bus. We are going into town.

• Drop the subject (wir) in the second sentence.
• Replace the verb in the second sentence - here the first person plural form fahren - with the infinitive. The infinitive form fahren happens to look the same in this particular case.
• Use a comma to separate the two separate ideas.

This now gives us the following sentence:

Wir warten auf den Bus, um in die Stadt zu fahren. – We are waiting for the bus in order to go in to town.