#definition

Some more grammatical terms for you today. There are many different types of pronouns - 7! :)

1. Personal pronoun: takes the place of a noun / thing;

2. Reflexive pronoun: adds info by pointing back to a noun

3. Intensive pronoun: adds emphasis to a noun / pronoun

4. Demonstrative pronoun: points back to a specific person / thing / place

5. Relative pronoun: beings the subordinate clause and relates the clause to a word in the main clause

6. Interrogative pronoun: is used to ask a question

7. Indefinite pronoun: refers to persons, places or things without specifying

#vocab

I know that many learners of German confuse these verbs sometimes, so I figured a short explanation might help you a bit ;)

So basically both “wissen” and “kennen” (both irregular) are translated to “(to) know”. But there is a slight difference in the meaning.

“kennen” expresses the familiarity with something.

Examples:

Kennst du meinen Bruder? = Do you know my brother? I

ch kenne diese Band. = I know (I’m familiar with) this band.

“wissen” expresses the knowledge of facts.

Examples:

Weißt du wo der Bahnhof ist? = Do you know where the station is?

Ich weiß, wie man Plätzchen backt. = I know how to bake cookies.

Well, I hope the meaning of both verbs is now a bit clearer :)

#grammar

When you learn German verbs, you’ll stumble upon two different kinds:

Irregular / strong verbs (unregelmäßige / starke Verben) are verbs, that change their stems in certain tenses - mostly the past tense. Sometimes the present tense is also affected. There are less than 200 irregular verbs in the German language, so mostly you’re lucky and come across regular / weak verbs (regelmäßige / schwache Verben).

Those follow a predictable and strict pattern in every tense. The tenses are formed by using the present infinite stem. What’s the stem of a verb then? Before I explain too much, let me give you a couple of examples:

Infinitive         Present        Simple Past        Past Participle

1. lieb-en        ich liebe       ich liebte           geliebt

2. hass-en      ich hasse      ich hasste          gehasst

Don’t pay too much attention to the tenses yet - I just wanted to make it clear what a verb stem is and how it affects the conjugation of regular verbs ;)

In dictionaries, you’ll find a list of all the irregular verbs. You can also find a list here. The GermanHeit twitter posts will always indicate whether a verb is irregular or regular when introducing one.

#grammar

Like in English, there are two kinds of articles in German:

The indefinite and the definite article.

Singular: ein, eine, ein = a = indefinite article

der, die, das = the = definite article

Plural:

left out like in English = indefinite article

die (for all 3 genders) = the = definite article

Note: The indefinite article is inflected, depending on the gender and the case of the noun! More about that in a seperate post.

Examples:

ein Löffel / der Löffel / Löffel / die Löffel = a spoon / the spoon / spoons / the spoons

eine Gabel / die Gabel / Gabeln / die Gabeln = a fork / the fork / forks / the forks

ein Messer / das Messer / Messer / die Messer = a knife / the knife / knives / the knives

#grammar

Now we know that there are three different noun genders in German. Do you remember which ones?!

masuline, feminine and neuter. Ok. Cool.

It’s very important to know the correct genders of German nouns. You have to learn them mostly by heart. However, some nouns have endings (suffixes) that usually apply to a certain gender and can therefore help you out a bit.

(m): -ich, -ling, -ist, -ismus

(f): -heit, -keit, -tät, -ung, -ik, or -schaft

(n): -chen or -lein

There are execptions of course ;) So treat the “rules” above not as very strict.

Usually -e is feminine as in die BlumE (flower) or die BananE (banana). But e.g.: der JungE (boy).

Nouns with the suffix -er and -ner are likely to be masculine as in der SommER (summer) or der GärtnER (gardener). But e.g.: das MessER (knife).

… So ehm…GermanHeit is… feminine! :) ;)

#grammar

English has “the”. Just one word for everything. When I learned that in school I was like “woot - only one” ;) Why? Well…3 genders have “survived” in the German language - and learners consider that to be a difficulty. So I wanna dedicate one or two posts to them:

maskulin / männlich (masculine) (m) - DER

feminin / weiblich (feminine) (f) - DIE

neutral / sächlich (neuter) (n) - DAS

Example:

die Frau = woman

der Mann = man

das Kind = child

When you learn new nouns my advise is: Always learn them with their accompanying definite article (der, die, das)! This is important to avoid all kinds of grammar mistakes.

Note: The grammatical gender of German nouns isn’t necessarily the real-life gender!

However, there are some noun endings which will help you recognize the gender. I’ll talk about that in another post, ok? :)

#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

#definition

Well, verbs are an essential part of every language, right? So having heard of the following terms will definitely help you understanding grammar better:

Conjugation (die Konjugation) = the groupings that verbs in many languages fall into according to the way they make their forms e.g. Ich lache, du lachst, er/sie/es lacht etc. = I laugh, you laugh, he/she/it laughs etc.

Infinitive (der Infinitiv) = the basic form of a verb e.g. lachen = (to) laugh

Tense (die Zeiten) = “time” of a verb e.g present tense, past tense…

Auxiliary verbs (Hilfs-/Modalverben) = used to help other verbs make their forms e.g. (to) have = haben, (to) be = sein

Active (das Aktiv) = “A does something to B” e.g. Martin is writing a letter.

Passive (das Passiv) = “B is having something done to him by A” e.g. A letter is being written by Martin.

#definition

Clauses make up sentences. In classical grammar, each clause has it’s own subject and verb.

The following types of clauses exist:

Main clause = can stand alone as a complete and logical sentence

Subordinate clause = it cannot stand alone, so it must have another clause with it to complete it

Relative clause = begins with a relative pronoun: who, whom, that, which