German · Chapter 5 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer
Subordinate clauses
Prescribed by the AQA specification.
The short version
After weil, the verb waits until the end
weil, dass, wenn and ob all start a subordinate clause, and a German subordinate clause puts its conjugated verb last, however long it runs. It is the same rule for every one of them, so there is nothing new to learn per word. Say weil and then consciously hold the verb back until the clause is finished.
Ich bleibe zu Hause, weil ich müde bin.
If it means whether, say ob, not wenn
English uses if for two different jobs. When if means in the event that, German says wenn. When it means whether, German says ob. Ich weiß nicht, wenn er kommt is one of the commonest learner errors, and to a German it sounds like a sentence that stopped halfway.
Ich weiß nicht, ob er kommt.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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10-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 18 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 8 of 16 in this chapter