German 3 grammar question

One of the sentences in German 3 says: “wollen die Anderen heute Nachmittag mit zum Strand kommen”. However, everything that i’ve been taught in german says that this is incorrect. I would normally type this sentence as: “wollen die Anderen heute Nachmittag zum Strand mitkommen”. Could someone tell me if I’m wrong and why?

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Great question!

I am a non-native, but have lived in Germany for over 30 years and have a university degree in the language, as well as a translator’s diploma, so I will throw in my two cents anyway.

Lange Rede, kurzer Sinn:

it’s perfectly OK to say it that way in spoken German, is what my ear is telling me.

Whether it is OK to write it that way is another matter, so I will tag a few native speakers of German whose names come to mind right now and we will see what they have to say!

@redux2, @GabrieleCramer-Knebe, @Olaf.Rabbachin:

What do you think of the question quoted?

I can think of other questions like this, so I think it is a natural construction, such as, “kommt er morgen mit aufs Fest?”, is a type of question I am prety sure I have heard several times before.

Both ways are perfectly valid (written and spoken)! The first is probably more common (“mit zum Strand kommen”), but that’s - once more - my personal perception and there are so many regional differences with respect to how something is being said, so I’m a bit wary.

That probably is as close as you can get to passing as a native! :grinning:

That’s actually a good one! Your expression is definitely much more common than the more elaborate “wird er morgen zum/aufs Fest mitkommen”. But again, both would be perfectly fine.
As a rule of thumb I’d add that ze Germans (me included) generally tend to separate separable words over keeping them together when both usages would be possible.

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Thank you very much Olaf! I have a long way until I learn colloquial speech, so I’ll sound a bit formal for the time being :smiley:

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