Don’t worry: you don’t have to learn this terrible word.
However, you will not get around the phenomenon behind the term ‘pronominal adverb’ if you want to speak or at least understand German well.
Surely you have heard words like ‘womit’, ‘damit’, ‘hiermit’, ‘damit’, ‘darum’, … before. And you have probably asked yourself what kind of strange words they are. They are not nouns and they are not verbs. They are not prepositions and they are not adjectives. The term ‘pronominal adverb’ suggests that they could be adverbs, or perhaps pronouns. Even linguists don’t quite agree on how these words should ultimately be classified.
You might like better what our friend Chris from England called these particular words:
“These are my ‘vomit and dammit words’.”
But it doesn’t matter what you call these words. You should understand what they mean, how they work and what they are good for.
To keep it reasonably short:
The first element of these words is always either ‘da’, ‘hier’ or ‘wo’.
The second element is always a preposition, for example ‘für’, ‘mit’ or ‘zu’.
With ‘da’ and ‘hier’, one refers to what has gone before or – much more rarely: the following.
Pronominal adverbs beginning with ‘wo’ usually occur in questions.
Is that too complicated, too theoretical for you?
No problem. Here are examples:
„Wir brauchen Ihr Angebot bis zum Wochenende.“ „Damit haben wir kein Problem.“
“We need your offer by the weekend.” “We have no problem with that.”
„Hiermit bestätigen wir Ihnen den Eingang Ihrer Zahlung.“
“We hereby confirm receipt of your payment.”
„Womit fährst du zur Arbeit?“ „Mit der S-Bahn.“
“What do you take to work?” “By suburban train.”
Wir wissen noch nicht, wofür wir uns entscheiden werden.“
“We don’t know yet what we will choose.”
There are two things you should still keep in mind:
- these ‘vomit and dammit words’ are used in the context of things, but not in the context of people.
„Ich komme mit dem Auto.“ „Womit kommst du?“
„Ich komme mit meinem Freund.“ „Mit wem kommst du?“
„Er denkt an seinen Porsche.“ „Woran denkt er?“
„Er denkt an seine Frau.“ „An wen denkt er?“
- If the preposition begins with a vowel, an ‘r’ is inserted. Examples:
wo + über = worüber
da + über = darüber
Now we hope you have fun with the pronominal adverbs – even if you might prefer to talk about ‘vomit and dammit words’.
And after all, these words have one undeniable advantage: they are neither conjugated nor declined. They simply are and remain as they are.