When first learning German, the unusual word order can be overwhelming. It’s so unfamiliar and seems to go against aspects of English (or your own language) that you may have assumed were universal to all languages.
But fear not! I assure you that over time you will get used to the word order to the point where you don’t even think about it anymore and it seems completely natural. Even an adult brain is able to adapt to it and develop an intuitive feel for correct sentence structure.
The key to mastering these rules is exposure and practice. Pay close attention to example sentences and notice the rules. Notice how the infinitive always gravitates to the end. Notice how the conjugated verb is in the second position. Notice the time-manner-place rule. I like to think of the components in a German sentence as Lego bricks. All German sentences are made up of these Lego bricks and all of them follow the same underlying pattern.
If it helps, you can even visualize the sentence like a conveyor belt, moving the infinitive to its final resting place at the end, or imagine that the finite (conjugated) and infinitive verbs don’t like each other and repel like magnets, causing the infinitive verb to get as far away as possible.
Let’s take a look at a longer sentence as an example. Here I’ve broken it down so you can see the individual Lego bricks in action.
| Morgen gleich nach Sonnenaufgang werde ich mit meiner Schwester in der Stadt fünfzehn große Ziegen kaufen. | Tomorrow immediately after sunrise will I with my sister in town 15 big goats buy. |
In this sentence we have the V2 rule applying because we put morgen gleich nach Sonnenaufgang to the front of the sentence, we have the time-manner-place rule due to the number of elements, we then have the direct object of the sentence (the goats), and we have the infinitive kaufen at the end because the infinitive always goes to the end when it’s being used with a conjugated verb (in this case werde)
Think of German sentences like a sandwich. The conjugated verb is the top slice of bread, and the infinitive at the end is the bottom slice. Everything else—the “filling”—fits neatly in between. This structure helps keep the meaning of the sentence clear, even if the sentence gets long or complex.