In English, this is expressed by the possessive “of” or an apostrophe with an “s” (‘s). Each grammar topic comes with one free exercise where you can review the basics, as well as many more Lingolia Plus exercises where you can practise according to your level. Check your understanding by hovering over the info bubbles for simple explanations and handy tips. And learning how to do this is best done while learning the German case system. Click here for many examples of each group (and also the most notable exceptions).
” (although I might bring this up once the crisis was resolved ☺). It didn’t matter that they used the feminine article instead of the neuter, I could still understand what they were trying to say. Unfortunately, the majority of nouns in German do not have a naturally occurring biological gender.
Online exercises to improve your German
Not masculine or feminine (and plural would obviously be books, and that’s different). The direct object (accusative) functions as the receiver of the action of a transitive verb. In the examples above, the man is acted upon by the dog, so he receives the action of the subject (the dog).
Since we’re using the preposition mit, which always takes the dative, the following noun needs to go in the Dativ case. The good news is that all these charts have much more in common than not. Possessives indicate possession, of course, as in that’s MY book.
Rules for Article ‘Der’
Well, the entries in this column aren’t real articles. Instead, they tell you how to construct the plural forms of certain related words like kein and mein. And the conventional weak declensions(and also a mixed declensions chart, that is part-strong, part-weak) applies only to adjectives, not determiners. Feminine and plural nouns do not add an ending in the genitive.
Well, the Dativ case is a bit more circuitous, so here we are dealing with the “indirect object”. Durch (through) is always followed by the dative, so der https://bigbostrade.com/ Wald becomes den Wald. In both sentences, the dog and the kids are being acted upon, on the receiving end of the verbs “to see” and “to take”.
What is noun case?
The four German cases are the nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative. You can think of these as the equivalent of the subject, possessive, indirect object, and direct object in English. Then, we’ll touch base on how the case system ties together with noun gender to give you the patterns to follow when plugging der die das into a sentence. As mentioned above, der die das are simply 3 ways of saying ‘the’ in German dependent on the gender of the noun. Notice how the feminine and neutral articles haven’t changed.
- The backside refers to the house, so das Haus goes in the genitive, becoming des Hauses.
- In English, this is expressed by the possessive “of” or an apostrophe with an “s” (‘s).
- And, of course, just as with the definite articles, you still have to learn how to know the gender and case of every noun in order to actually use the charts.
- In fact, we need to put declensions on some additional words, too (and we’ll cover that!).
- It’s all about using the corresponding articles as you learn new words, and then paying close attention to them as they’re used in different contexts.
Knowing the assigned (and predictable, but rarely intuitive) gender of each German noun is half of the battle of using a noun in a sentence. While the noun’s gender is pretty meaningless (but still has to be accounted for — rats!), the noun’s case is VERY important information. In German, the definite article is much more important than it is in English. An trading diary English-speaker might say “nature is wonderful.” In German, the article would also be included to say “die natur ist wunderschön.” If you’re a German beginner, this table might seem quite daunting. But, apart from grouping the article forms according to their similarity, there is one other thing you can do to make your life easier – DROP THE GENITIVE CASE.
It is also reflected in the use of possessive adjectives such as sein(e) (his) or mein(e) (my), which are also called “ein-words.” You can tell that a noun is in the genitive case by the article, which changes to des/eines (for masculine and neuter) or der/einer (for feminine and plural). Since the genitive only has two forms (des or der), you only need to learn those two. However, in the masculine and neuter, there is also an additional noun ending, either -es or -s. In the examples below, the genitive word or expression is in bold.
The indefinite article (“a” or “an” in English) is ein or eine in German. Ein basically means “one” and like the definite article, it indicates the gender of the noun it goes with (eine or ein). For a feminine noun, only eine can be used (in the nominative case).
The Genitive Case in German – Des/Des/Der
As in English, German nouns are often preceded by the definite (the) or indefinite article (a/an) or another determiner (e.g. some/any), as well as an adjective or two. When you place these three things together, you create what we grammarians call a noun phrase. And, of course, just as with the definite articles, you still have to learn how to know the gender and case of every noun in order to actually use the charts.
When you work with the full All-In-One Declensions Chart (I’m sharing just the relevant portion with you in this article!), there are additional directions-for-use that go into it. What all the charts on that long list above have in common are the very last letters that get put onto the words. We can replace ALL of the conventional charts listed above.
Articles are little (but important) words such as ‘the’ and ‘a’. The accusative is used in some standard time and distance expressions. Example sentences in German using Chart with translations in English.
How to know the gender of any noun
The important part of any noun (for determining its gender, anyway) is the end of it, or, its suffix. There are certain suffixes that are almost exclusively masculine, feminine, and neuter. Memorizing hundreds (if not thousands) of individual German nouns is enough work already — but to try making a random association between each one and either der, die or das? German articles are used similarly to the English articles,a and the. However, they are declined differently (change) according to the number, gender and case of their nouns. In order to properly signal that a noun (e.g. Mann) is the subject in the nominative ‘slot’, you need to know the right declensions to use.
We see this reflected in the words der (masculine), die (feminine), and das (neuter). Yes, you read that correctly – “the girl” in German is grammatically not feminine, but neuter (das Mädchen). You will find the reasoning behind this seemingly senseless and illogical feature of the German language in the following section.
Amusingly, der Werfall translates literally as “the who case.” Just like there are different ways of saying ‘the’ in German, there are also different ways of saying words such as this, that, which, some, many, each/every, and all. Next, you’re going to learn how to use this All-In-One Chart to specifically for the nominative case.