Advanced Discourse Connectors
Advanced Discourse Connectors
Beyond aber and deshalb, sophisticated German writing draws on a wider set of connectors — dennoch, allerdings, folglich, mithin — and unlike English's freely-placed connectors, most of these grab position one and force the subject to move.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Connector adverbs occupy a sentence slot and trigger inversion — coordinating conjunctions don't
Er ist müde, aber er arbeitet weiter. (aber: subject 'er' stays in position 1) vs. Er ist müde. Dennoch arbeitet er weiter. (dennoch takes position 1, so 'arbeitet' comes before 'er')
He's tired, but he keeps working. vs. He's tired. Nevertheless, he keeps working.
True coordinating conjunctions (aber, und, oder, denn, sondern) don't occupy a grammatical slot in the clause — the subject still comes first right after them. Connector adverbs like dennoch, allerdings, jedoch, folglich, and mithin behave differently: if placed at the very front of a sentence, they fill position one themselves, which pushes the verb to position two and the subject to position three (Dennoch arbeitet er weiter — literally 'Nevertheless works he on'). English connectors like 'nevertheless' or 'however' never do this — English has no verb-second rule to trigger — so English speakers must actively remember to invert the subject and verb whenever one of these words opens a German sentence.
Contrastive connectors, from neutral to formal
aber (neutral) < jedoch (more formal 'but') < allerdings (contrast plus a qualification, 'mind you') < dennoch/trotzdem (nevertheless, despite that) < nichtsdestotrotz/gleichwohl (very formal 'nonetheless')
but < however < that said/mind you < nevertheless/despite that < nonetheless (formal)
English has a comparable formality ladder — but, however, that said, nevertheless, nonetheless — so the concept of choosing a contrastive connector by register is already familiar. The main new work is mapping specific German words onto specific rungs of that ladder: allerdings often adds a qualifying afterthought rather than a flat contradiction ('Das Restaurant ist teuer. Allerdings schmeckt das Essen hervorragend' — 'The restaurant is expensive. That said, the food tastes excellent'), while nichtsdestotrotz and gleichwohl are reserved for quite formal writing and would sound stilted in casual conversation.
Causal/consecutive connectors for formal writing
folglich, demzufolge, mithin (= formal 'consequently, hence, therefore')
consequently, hence, therefore
folglich, demzufolge, and mithin all mean roughly 'as a consequence' and belong to written, often academic or legal, register — they'd sound oddly stiff in casual speech, where deshalb or deswegen is the everyday choice. Like the contrastive connectors above, these trigger inversion when they open a sentence (Folglich muss das Gesetz geändert werden — 'Consequently, the law must be amended'), giving English writers of formal prose one more spot where a familiar-looking connector ('consequently') hides an unfamiliar word-order requirement.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| German | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| dennoch | DEN-nokh | nevertheless |
| allerdings | AL-er-dings | that said / mind you (contrast plus qualification) |
| jedoch | yay-DOKH | however |
| indessen | in-DES-en | meanwhile / however (formal) |
| nichtsdestotrotz | nikhts-des-toh-TROTS | nonetheless (formal) |
| gleichwohl | GLYKH-vohl | nonetheless / all the same (formal) |
| mithin | mit-HIN | therefore / thus (formal) |
| folglich | FOLG-likh | consequently |
| demzufolge | daym-tsoo-FOL-geh | accordingly / hence |
| zumal | tsoo-MAHL | especially since / particularly as |
| immerhin | IM-er-hin | at least / after all (acknowledging a redeeming point) |