weil

See also: Weil, weil., and weiļ

German[edit]

weil

because, given that
Ich kann nicht kommen, weil ich krank bin.
I can't come because I'm sick.

In standard German, weil is a subordinating conjunction and links a subordinate clause with the conjugated verb in the final position:^[1] Sie hat den Zug verpasst, weil sie schon wieder verschlafen hat. (“She missed the train because she overslept yet again.”) At the beginning of a sentence, some style guides prefer replacing weil with da: Da sie schon wieder verschlafen hat, hat sie den Zug verpasst.
In spontaneous speech, weil is also used as a coordinating conjunction by linking a second independent clause with the conjugated verb in the second position:^[2] Sie hat den Zug verpasst, weil sie hat schon wieder verschlafen. Here, weil functions similarly to denn: Sie hat den Zug verpasst, denn sie hat schon wieder verschlafen. In writing which imitates speech (such as texting), this same phenomenon can be observed.
It is possible that weil is currently undergoing a process of re-grammaticalization in which it can be used like da or denn; that is, as a subordinating or coordinating conjunction. From 1955 to 1974, only 8.3% of weil-clauses in spontaneous speech were verb-second,^[3] yet by 1993 to 2000, this had increased to 46.6%.^[4] If such a process is underway, it is far from complete: Usage of weil as a coordinating conjunction with a verb-second word order remains nonstandard^[5] and is virtually non-existent in formal written German.

^ “Unterordnende Konjunktionen: (Subordinierende Konjunktionen, Subjunktionen)”, in Leos deutsche Grammatik‎^[1], 2023 November (last accessed), archived from the original on 2021-07-11
^ Petra Schulz, Emanuela Sanfelici (2020) “Children are sensitive to the default verb order in German subordinate clauses: Evidence from ‘because’ clauses in spontaneous speech”, in Proceedings of the 44th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development‎^[2], pages 548-561
^ Ulrike Freywald (2010) “Obwohl vielleicht war es ganz anders: Vorüberlegungen zum Alter der Verbzweitstellung nach subordinierenden Konjunktionen”, in Historische Textgrammatik und Historische Syntax des Deutschen: Traditionen, Innovationen, Perspektiven‎^[3], →ISBN, pages 55-84
^ Kempen, G., Harbusch, K. (2016) “Verb-second word order after German weil ‘because’: Psycholinguistic theory from corpus-linguistic data”, in Glossa: a journal of general linguistics‎^[4], archived from the original on 2023-05-29
^ “Satzbau nach „weil“”, in Duden‎^[5], 2023 September (last accessed), archived from the original on 2023-07-31