I have had the following text corrected .. (for information I wrote "dass")

Please can someone just quickly give me the technical grammatical reason why it is das (ie the role the word is playing in the sentence - I thought it was a conjunction). I thought I had these two words sussed but now I'm back to being confused

"Sie dachten, das dieser Streich sei witzig"

I would use "dass" in that case as well. Who "corrected" it?

It's either

"Sie dachten dieser Streich sei witzig" or
"Sie dachten, dass dieser Streich witzig sei"

ooohh. Corrected by 4th class primary school teacher.

Well actually, it was a mistake my son made on his dictation today. He brought it home to copy out the corrections 3 times. I asked him if he was sure the correction was "das" because I would have used "dass" too, but would not have had enough of the feel of the language to realise that the word order is also up the spout.

In a subordinate clause( Nebensatz in German ), the verb goes at the end of the sentence.

Yes I realised that just as I posted above.

So not really sure which version the teacher was going for here .. leaving me with a tricky situation as to whether I should point out the error or not.

Probably choosing the not route for now ...

I would ask the teacher anyway, pretend you're learning yourself and could they explain it? They then might see their own error

"Sie dachten, dieser Streich sei witzig."

Other version approved, although it sounds a bit awkward. I mean, grammatically correct but not very good style.

I must confess that the first thing comming to my mind when I read the title of this thread was:

"First rule about Fight Cluc German Grammar is: there are no rules!"

When I asked my German teacher the rules for the plural form she almost choked...

Rule of thumb: it's "das" if you could use "dieser/diese/dieses", "jener/jene/jenes" or "welcher/welche/welches" (these, those, whom) instead. Otherwise, it's "dass". Or, as the old guy (in Cologne) said on seeing a young girl at the pool in a very daring swinmsuit: "Dass das das darf!" (I can't believe she's allowed to wear this!")

It's true that it's a bit bumpy and clumsy and lacking in elegance, but journalists fill pages with this sort of sentences. Especially journalists of rags like 20 Minuten and Blick am Abend and those who write manuals for SUVs, believing their readers are too stupid to understand the full unleashed power of the subjunctive. So you can't blame the readers for picking up these clumsy forms.

Arrrgh! I just can not get used to this bloody reformed German. it´s daß not dass, or Gruß not Gruss, außen not aussen, same with Schifffahrt, three eff´s I ask you, what genius came up with that one.
However I do get to freak out my Spellchecker so it´s not all bad.

It hasn't been anything with "ß" in Switzerland for quite some time now.

True, 1996 in Germany and 2003 in CH, I still can not get my head around the Rechtschreibreform though.
It´s daß, basta!

Er, it's been phased out since 1906 in Switzerland. In Kanton Zurich, the "ß" has not been taught in schools since 01 Jan 1938. The last Swiss newspaper to drop the "ß" was Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1974.

Ok! I bow to your superior wisdom, not in Germany though
Come to think of it I have not seen "ß" here so yes!

To a Swiss, nothing says "I'M GERMAN!" quite like using "ß" in written German. Only "die Strassenbahn" [or is that "Straßenbahn"], "Hähnchen" or "Reisebus" come close (correct words are "das Tram", "Poulet" (or "Güggeli") and "Car" (or "Gesellschaftswagen")).

I sign my emails with "Freundliche Grüße" Took me a while to find out how people knew on the telephone they had to speak high-German with me...

That would be Straßenbahn, Goggel, in the south, or Goldbroiler, way, way, east, Reisebus works just fine. Gesellschaftswagen is a coach from the Bundesbahn.

Even much cuter in Schaffhauser dialect: "Da da da taar!" Same in some parts of Thurgau.
According to new (= reformed) orthography, it's "dass" also in German German (in Swiss German standard it was already since the 1930's). And "Schifffahrt" with three f's is only logical and a simplification compared to the old system of "Pressspan" with three s's but "Pressack" with two, althoug it is a composite of "Press-" and "Sack).

I don't like the reformed orthography, but there are things that are substantially simpler and clearer now.