Take the 2-minute tour ×

I'm talking about "damit, daraus, darauf, darin, da-..."

I've never heard "darohne" or anything like that, and according to the dictionary, nothing like that exists.

Can anyone explain a bit and perhaps give more examples of prepositions that don't form these "da-" words?

share|improve this question
old fashioned : Die christliche Lehre vom innern Gottes-Dienst: in 10 Predigten - books.google.de/… –  bummi May 15 '13 at 8:40
Here are some uses... Sounds like a good old-fashioned german word for poets. Even I, as a native speaker didn't know the word 'til now! ^^ –  Aschratt May 15 '13 at 14:09
In the book bummi linked, why is it "GOtt" and not "Gott" throughout? –  misterben May 19 '13 at 16:33
@misterben I guess, because Gott is a substantive, and it's capitalized independing of it's meaning. But then, which would be the equivalent of capitalizing god, as done in many languages? Well, it would be GOtt. –  c.p. May 17 '14 at 9:10
@misterben It's emphasis. The typesetter chose to typeset emphasis by capitalizing (bad practice). As c.p. pointed out, that's not easy with nouns in German, so it got double capitalization (even worse practice). –  Toscho May 17 '14 at 17:42

3 Answers 3

As bummis link proves the word darohne used to exist. So why did it disappear? I can only speculate but speculate I can. So the da in the da-words is like a verbal index finger pointing at whatever is being connected with the preposition. Ohne however implies that something is NOT there. Pointing at something that is not there is kind of hard... so maybe that's the reason ;).

As was said in the question, today we would have to say ohne das/es/. But I think in many occasions people use just ohne and leave the demonstrative pronoun away. To me, ohne das/es sounds weird because it conflicts with the da-words system in my head.

share|improve this answer

I've been living in Germany for about 2 years and am now approaching fluency in the language. There is no such thing as "darohne", if you want to use it in a Nebensatz, as detraraveller said, it is ohne das, or whatever accusative article you need.

You of course can not use a da compound for any sort of Genetiv preposition:

wegen, deshalb, trotz, etc...

The same goes for "wo" compounds.

German, just like English has a lot of rules, which were made to be broken, so sometimes you just have to learn them and practice like mad! I'd really recommend investing in a good grammar book, especially if you are preparing for a language certificate. This book, helped me quite a bit though it might be really difficult to buy outside of the EU.

share|improve this answer
"deswegen" comes quite close to being a "da + wegen" compound, though. –  karoshi May 17 '14 at 10:24

As a student of German language, from what I know, darohne doesn't exist. You have to say ohne das etc...

And not directly related to the question but i hope you know that you cannot use da words for humans. You can only use it for non-living things. I would be looking forward to some experienced person answering this question...

share|improve this answer
check out the book linked to by @bummi ; apparently that word used to exist –  vlad-ardelean May 15 '13 at 9:17
Without having any idea what darohne should express, I'd tend to understand it as an opposite to damit. For that reason, I think if you trying to find an existing expression it had to be "ohne dass" with two 's'. Ex: "A: Schreib es auf, damit[=auf dass] du es nicht vergiss. B: Ich hab es mir schon aufgeschrieben, darohne[=ohne dass] du es bemerkt hast. –  Em1 May 15 '13 at 10:53

Your Answer


