Der gestern von uns gekaufte Tisch: a whole clause wedged inside the article
CEFR B2 · part 1
edumaterial's parts within the level. The European framework does not subdivide them.
The passive in the past and with modals: wurde gebaut, muss gemacht werdenTaking the passive into the tenses that were missing. In the Präteritum only werden…Die Tür wird geöffnet or ist geöffnet: the action and the stateTelling apart two sentences that look alike and mean different things. Die Tür wird…Er sagte, er sei krank: the Konjunktiv I of the newspapersReporting what somebody else said without making it yours. German has a verb form just…Er muss krank sein: when the modal is not an order but a guessThe modals' second job, the one the dictionary does not mention. Er muss krank sein is…dennoch, folglich, hingegen: the connectors of written GermanThe connectors that make a text read as if an adult wrote it: dennoch for concession…bestehen aus, auf or in: when the preposition changes the meaningThe advanced tier of prepositional verbs: the ones with SEVERAL prepositions that mean…The rule, in three lines
The construction that makes German technical prose unreadable: a whole clause is wedged between the article and the noun. Der gestern von uns gekaufte Tisch is the table we bought yesterday. There is one recipe: find the noun at the end, then the participle, and read backwards.
The usual slip. Trying to read it left to right, getting stuck on the third word and giving the sentence up. And the opposite mistake: using it in speech, where it does not exist — a relative clause with der, die or das says the same without dizzying anybody. There is a formal slip too: the participle declines like any adjective, and with all that baggage in front it is easy to forget the ending.
Why it catches you out. English allows short versions —«the recently painted door»— so the idea is not alien. What English never does is put a whole prepositional phrase in there, which is why «the yesterday by us bought table» reads like a joke, and is exactly what German writes.