‹Ich muss Kunst und Deutsch lernen. Obwohl- nee, Deutsch lernen hab ich nicht nötig›. Sprachwandel als Sprachvariation: obwohl-Sätze im DaF-Unterricht»

In German obwohl is known as a concessive conjunction used to express a circum-stance that does not have the result or effect one would expect. Concessive conjunctions are subordinating conjunctions, i.e. they introduce a subordinate clause that ends with the conjugated verb (verb last). On the basis of research results it will now be shown how in the past few years obwohl has undergone a functional expansion, especially in the spoken language. In fact, together with its traditional concessive role, it can also have a corrective function as, for example, it can partially or entirely correct the assertion in the main clause. This correction also brings a different word order: in an corrective obwohl clause the verb is no longer in the last position but it moves to the second place (verb second). Contrary to what lay linguists have frequently maintained, the present paper posits that, far from being an instance of language decay, this phenomenon is a result of language change. This finding is most important especially for foreign language teaching, which should be based on everyday communication. Accordingly, the present paper provides examples of exercises on the corrective use of obwohl, which aim to encourage students of German as a foreign language to analyze and reflect upon language change and the construction of the obwohl clauses.