In main clauses in German, the nominative subject typically appears in the first position, directly before the conjugated verb. This follows the standard word order of subject-verb-object:
Der Hund schläft im Garten. (The dog is sleeping in the garden.)
Meine Schwester trinkt Kaffee. (My sister is drinking coffee.)
However, German allows for flexibility in word order, particularly when another sentence element occupies the first position. This results in the subject appearing after the verb, a structure known as inversion. The verb always remains in the second position:
Im Garten schläft der Hund. (In the garden, the dog is sleeping.)
Heute trinkt meine Schwester Kaffee. (Today, my sister is drinking coffee.)
Mit großer Freude liest mein Vater die Zeitung. (With great joy, my father reads the newspaper.)
This inverted structure is common when a time expression, a place expression, or another element providing context is placed at the beginning of the sentence. While the order changes, the subject remains in the nominative case, and the verb retains its fixed second position.
In spoken German, word order can also be manipulated for emphasis. In informal speech, speakers sometimes leave the first position empty, placing the subject after the finite verb. This is done to highlight the object that would typically have been in the first position. While English equivalents often omit the subject altogether, German keeps it, relying on word order to create emphasis:
Das Hat der Peter doch gesagt! (Peter did say so!)
Das Verstanden hat der Junge nichts. (The boy didn’t understand a thing.)
Das Wissen wir schon. (We Already know that.)
Here, the expected word order would place the object in the first position, but by leaving it empty, the speaker draws more attention to it.
A particular case arises when the subject is the pronoun es. When used as an expletive, functioning as a grammatical placeholder rather than referring to a specific noun, it must always appear at the beginning of the sentence:
Es regnet. (It is raining.)
Es gibt ein Problem. (There is a problem.)
However, when es serves as a pronoun referring to an actual noun, it follows the same inversion rules as any other subject:
Heute sieht es besser aus. (Today, it looks better.)
Morgen hört es auf zu schneien. (Tomorrow, it will stop snowing.)
In this case, es moves to the position after the verb when another element occupies the first position, just like other nominative subjects. German’s word order allows for variation while maintaining clarity, enabling speakers to emphasize different elements of a sentence through structural choices.