Ten minutes before the evening class ended, Teacher laid six word cards in a straight line across the table. The tea in her cup had gone cold. Its rim held down a worksheet covered in German.
The student by the window gripped his phone. The next morning he had to send a voice message to his exchange partner. On the screen he had written only one sentence in his own language: “I think I can speak a little German.”
“Say it to me first.” Teacher uncapped her red pen.
The student drew a breath.
Ich glaube, dass ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen.
By the time he reached kann, Teacher’s pen was already descending toward the paper. He caught sight of the red point. His voice dropped, and the rest of the sentence dissolved into the traffic beyond the window.
“Did I put it in the wrong place again?”
The pen stopped in midair. Teacher watched him for a moment, then lifted the point an inch.
“Finish the sentence first.”
He pressed record again. He still left kann in the middle, but this time he carried the sentence all the way to its full stop. Teacher waited for the waveform on the screen to end before turning over the cards:
Ich glaube | dass | ich | ein bisschen Deutsch | sprechen | kann
She took kann from the third position and set it at the far right.
“After dass, the conjugated verb goes to the end. Here, it is sprechen kann.”
He read from the cards once, then again. On the second attempt he stopped after ein bisschen Deutsch and looked at the red pen.
Teacher put the cap back on and moved both hands away from the table.
“Sprechen kann,” he finished slowly.
The heating pipe beneath the window gave a small knock. Teacher left the six cards where they were and pushed the phone back toward him.
The third recording was short. He listened to it with his thumb suspended over Send.
“Does it sound stupid?”
Teacher moved the cold tea aside and cleared a corner of the table for him.
“They will understand you. Send it.”
He pressed the button and wound his scarf twice around his neck. At the door, he turned back and pointed to the first sentence on the worksheet.
“Should I cross that one out?”
Teacher picked up the red pen. On the page, kann had been squeezed into the middle, followed by a long, hurried tail of words. The pen hovered above the letters. Then she drew a small arrow over three words and brought it down just before the full stop.
After the door closed, six word cards remained on the table. The card at the far right read kann. Beside it lay the red pen, capped tight.
About this episode
This AlterWorld story takes place during an evening German lesson. Teacher uses six word cards to arrange Ich glaube, dass ich ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen kann. in natural order. A subordinate clause introduced by dass normally places its conjugated verb at the end. Here, the modal verb is kann, with the infinitive sprechen immediately before it. The scene also shows a small choice in language correction: the learner finishes the sentence before Teacher moves the cards. Read the previous story about Emo’s French lunch invitation, visit the English story index, or learn about reading foreign-language EPUB files with less interruption.
Language-learning thread
dassintroduces a German subordinate clause and often follows a statement of thought, knowledge, or belief.Ich glaube, dass …means “I think that …”.- In this clause, the infinitive
sprechencomes before the modal verbkannat the end. - The complete sentence is
Ich glaube, dass ich ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen kann.: “I think I can speak a little German.”