28th April, 2009

Grammatical terms 5: Words about nouns

posted 2 years ago

#definition

Of course we need to understand some important terms about nouns, now that we can understand the ones about verbs, right? ;)

Declension (die Deklination) = groupings that nouns fall into according to the way they make their forms (see “case”)

Gender (der Genus/die Gattung) = don’t confuse this with the sex; in German, there are three different genders (more about them soon) that are assigned to nouns independent of their corresponding sex e.g. der Mond (masculine) = moon

Case (der Kasus/Fall) = German has 4 cases (more about them soon) and it’s hard to wrap your brain around them as an English speaker at first. However you have them, too - but they aren’t apparent with your nouns. e.g. he/his/him

Singular (der Singular / die Einzahl) = only one person/object etc. e.g. ein Hund = a dog

Plural (der Plural / die Mehrzahl) = more than one person/object etc. e.g. Hunde = dogs

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