Grammar
German is an inflected language. In contrast to Latin, the inflection affects not only the word ending but also its stem, making declension and conjugation slightly more difficult.
Noun inflection
German nouns inflect into:
- one of three declension classes
- one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Word endings indicate some grammatical genders; others are arbitrary and must be memorized.
- two numbers: singular and plural
- four cases: nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative case.
- In the German orthography, unlike any other orthography, all nouns and most words that take the syntactical function of nouns are capitalized.
Like most Germanic languages, German forms left-branching noun compounds, where the first noun modifies the category given by the second, e.g. Hundehaus (eng. doghouse) or Sommerzeit (eng. summertime). Unlike English, where newer compounds or combinations of longer nouns are often written in open form with separating spaces, German (like the other German languages) always uses the closed form without spaces, e.g., Baumhaus (eng. tree house). Like English, German allows arbitrarily long compounds, but these are rare. (See also English compounds.)
Adjective Endings in German
Here is a different way of approaching adjective endings in German, an approach that avoids thinking in terms of charts and complicated rules. This approach only requires you to ask yourself two simple questions. The basic premise is to separate thinking about CASES (nominative, accusative, etc.) from thinking about ADJECTIVE ENDINGS, since most learners tend to get confused when they have to combine the two. While this approach may not magically transform you into a spontaneous master of adjective endings, it takes the fear out of adjective endings and eliminates some of the frustrations of German grammar. QUESTION ONE: For each adjective, ask yourself this question: Is there a form of the article with an obvious ending in front of the adjective? If YES, ask yourself... QUESTION TWO: Is the ending on the article the original "-r, -e, -s" (i.e., "der, die, das, eine" -- the "dictionary entry" gender)? Can you "see" the gender in the article? If the ARTICLE ending is ORIGINAL, then...THE ADJECTIVE ENDING is -e. If the answer to Question Two is NO, then we have a changed article ending, such as "den, des, dem, eines, einem" or "die" in the plural. If the ARTICLE ending is CHANGED, then...THE ADJECTIVE ENDING is -en.
If the answer to Question One is NO ARTICLE ENDING AT ALL, (either because there is no article or because the article is "ein"), then... you have to think about gender and case and add the ending that "der, die, das" would normally have to the ADJECTIVE. This includes endings such as: -es (das), -er (der), -em (dem), -e (die, plural).
Verb Inflection
one of two conjugation classes, weak and strong (like English). There are about 200 irregular verbs.
- three persons: 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
- two numbers: singular and plural
- three moods: Indicative, Conditional, Imperative
- two genera verbi: active and passive; the passive being composed and dividable into static and dynamic.
- 2 non-composed tenses (Present, Preterite) and 4 composed tenses (Perfect, Plusquamperfect, Future I, Future II)
- no distinction between aspects (in English, perfect and progressive)
- There are also a lot of ways to expand the meaning of a base verb through several prefixes.
The word order is much more flexible than in English. The word order can be changed for subtle changes of a sentence's meaning.
Most German vocabulary is derived from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, although there are significant minorities of words derived from Latin, French, and most recently English.