Nach, nachdem or danach? How to say 'after' and 'during' in German

If you do know what I'm talking about already, then today will be easy for you because the rules for after endurance. Very similar. Also, worauf warten wir noch? Let's have a look at nach, nach dem, danach, and während.

Notice how in German these activities are still treated as nouns and have a capital letter, even if they originate from a ver. You also probably noticed that nach in this context of time is always followed by the dative, because we saw all lots of lots of m's there. Have a look at this other example sentence. Nach I nam besuch in the sauna fühle ich mich wie neu. So after a visit, and the visit is in the detauna, I feel like a new person.

Okay, nach plus noun means after. Weiter geht's. Our second word for after is nach dem. Now with NATAM, we are back to those incomplete sentence parts that are called subordinate clauses. If we are dealing with these sentence parts that cannot stand by themselves, then we need to use nachdem for the correct word for after. Example, ich esse die Schokolade erst.

Nachdem ich den Gipfel erreicht habe. Okay, so I only eat the chocolate after I have reached the summit. Now there's two things that are important here. The sentence part starting with nach dem, our subordinate clause, has the verb at the end. If you think back to our example, we said, Nachdem ich den Gipfel erreicht habe. So our conjugated verb habe is at the very end of the sentence part. And this is quite unique to Nathdem, the sentence part with NADEM is always in the past tense.

And this does kind of make sense since you're talking about what you do after you have done something else. Nachdem ich die Äpfel geschält habe, esse ich sie. So after I have peeled the apples, I eat them. I need to peel them first, I've finished peeling them, now I eat them. So the part with the peeling is in the part.

However, if the action in your main sentence, in our case the eating, is also in the past, then you need to use a past and that is even further back, which would be the pluperfect oder plusquamperfect of Deutsch. Look at the same sentence again. Nachdem ich die Appel geschilt hatte, ask ich sie. So in English we would be, that would be after I had peeled the apples, I ate them. So again we use a past that's further back than the past tense in our main sentence.

Remember, merken, nachdem works like before and that it is used for a subordinate clause. However, this clause needs to use a past tense that happened earlier than the tense in the sentence part that follows.

Quite complicated, but you saw in the examples what I mean. Gut, unser drittes Wort. Danach. Well, danach already looks a lot like dafor that we saw in the last video, and it works in exactly the same way. No extra rules this time, no complications. It translates best as after that and it does connect two separate sentences. Danach kocht er was Leckeres. So Martin is going shopping now. After that, he's cooking something tasty.

Instead of the nach, you could also use the word nachher. The rules, use and meaning are much the same, only that nachher I would say refers to a general later time instead of referring to a specific event. In our last sentence we had he's going shopping, that was our event, and we said after that he does something else. If you use Nacha, you just say at a later point.

Wonderbar! Just like that, you have also mastered how to translate after in German. Now there is one last word that we need to tackle. That is the word for during a while, which is während in German. Good news, it's only one word and not three words this time. Bad news, there is Well a little bit of a difference depending on how you use that word. You can either use it again with a noun, so we could say während der Ferien besuche ich oft Freunde. During the holidays, I often visit friends.

Or you could also use it to start a subordinate clause, those incomplete clauses with a verb at the very end again. So look at this example. Während ich dieses Video schaue, mache ich nichts anderes. So while I am watching this video, I am doing nothing else. So you see, Varent is definitely a lot easier because it's just at one word, but it has those two different uses.

Now, I would say because we are on a roll, there's one more thing I want to show you, just very quickly, and that is those three little words kurz. und direkt Now they are all words you can use with any of the words for before or after. You could, for example, say, Martin was here kurz before er verschwand. So Martin was here. just before he disappeared. So you see you just add kurz for the meaning of just and you can do that with any of the words for before or any of the words for after.

Another example would be hol mich bitte direkt nach dem Einkaufen ab. So please come and get me directly after shopping. So you can use direct to say that something happens immediately before or after something else. And then the last one I mentioned earlier was ich geh schnell duschen and gleich danach rufe ich dich zurück. Versprochen. So I'm taking a shower and right after that I'll call you back. I'll promise.

So gleich was the word that we used here, and it is similar to direct, but it's a little bit less immediate. In our example, the person is likely to still, for example, put on some clothes before they make that call that they promised.

Now, if you want to practice what you learned today, I did prepare an exercise sheet for you to download. All you have to do is follow the link in the description and it will take you straight to the worksheet. Also, viel Spaß beim Üben und hoffentlich bis bald. Happy coffee break.