#german syntax

[suplanguages]

hello! I just found an old vocab list from German a few years ago, and it says 'in Berlin, ist es kalt', does the word order change when you add a place in front of it, or is it because it is talking about the weather?

Hi! The former is right. It’s because you’re specifying the place before you specify the weather. If you talked about the weather first, the word order would be “normal”, i.e. es ist kalt in Berlin. 

Also it might be a typo but there shouldn’t be a comma in there, it should be “In Berlin ist es kalt”. 

[suplanguages]

How do you know what order to put adverbs in? Like, "Ich möchte sehr gern" or "Ich möchte nicht so gern". Is there a distinction of "main" adverbs that other related ones are supposed to follow, or something else?

Hi! You seem to already know where to put the adverb in the sentence. If you use sehr it usually comes before the thing you want to stress, so in this case the second adverb gern. This is a specific case, though. Generally, I’d say try and figure out the relationship between the adverbs. You don’t have a lot of them after one another very often anyway. But if one of the adverbs describes another, then I’d say put it before it, like with sehr.

If you have any more specific questions, I’ll be happy to help.