However, when you want to ask a question, you have to move the verb to the first position. (He studies medicine.)Īs you may have noticed, these sentence structures are very similar in both English and German. Typically, the verb (the word relating to an action) comes in the second position of a sentence. German Verbs Come Second, Most Of The Timeĭon't worry! Verb position is one of the most straightforward grammar concepts in German. If you’re ready to get started, click here for a 7-day FREE trial. With German Uncovered you’ll use my unique StoryLearning® method to learn tricky German grammar naturally through stories. And start expressing yourself in German sooner.īy the way, if you want to learn German fast and have fun while doing it, my top recommendation is German Uncovered which teaches you through StoryLearning®. And by focusing your efforts on the most important rules, like the ones you'll discover in this post, you'll save time and energy. (Despite what the Grammar Villain would have you believe). German grammar is actually simpler than you might imagine. So how do you know where to place those nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and verbs? German sentences appear to follow some sort of jumbled English grammar. In this article, you'll find out the seven basic German grammar rules beginners need to know to start speaking the language right away. Grammar is the framework that creates the structure of every sentence.Įssentially, grammar is a set of rules that helps you communicate accurately by composing sentences in specific ways. Well, the reason is, every language uses different grammar rules to build sentences. In the above examples, the words "vielleicht" and "und" are particles and their position in the sentence is not one but zero.Įine Katze ist kein Hund und ein Zebra ist kein Pferd.Ī cat is not a dog and a zebra is not a horse.Įin Ei ist kein Ball aber der Thunfisch ist ein Fisch.Īn egg is not a ball but the tuna is a fish.If only you could learn German by just memorising translations of words – why isn't language learning that simple? The object is still the first element and verb is the second element. In other words, if the particle is placed before the object then the particle position is zero. Sometimes a particle is placed before the object, but it doesn't change the position numbers of elements, because the particles occupy no position. The following is the video summary of the topic compound nouns. To learn more about traffic system in Germany, please visit /drivingingermany. Or in case of "Sozialgeld" it would be "das Sozialgeld" (social money)īecause the last word in the combination is "das Geld" (money).ĭer Zebrastreifen (cross-walk / zebra crossing)ĭie Tiefgarage (underground parking lot ) In the case of "Sozialarbeiterin" it would be "die Sozialarbeiterin" , In this chapter, it is just a hint that you should be ready for what's coming next.Ī combination can also be formed by joining an article and a noun, as in the above example, "der Sozialarbeiter". Certain prepositions also cause declination of the article and we shall discuss in the coming lessons how articles decline with certain cases and prepositions. This is the declination of the original article "die" into "der" due to the preposition "an", (which means at in English). Medizinuniversität (medical university) is still a feminine noun, even with the article "der". Frau Doktor Lisa Müller ist auch Professorin an der Medizinuniversität. Is the combination of two nouns, "die Medizin"Īnd gets its article "die" from the last noun, "die Universität".īut just recently we have learned a sentence where the noun Universität is using the article "der". As in the above example, "der Zahnarzt" (dentist) gets its article from the last word in the combination, i.e. In the above example "der Zahn"Īre two separate nouns, and they combine to form a single noun "der Zahnarzt".Ī noun formed by the combination of two nouns extracts its article from the last noun in the combination. Joining two nouns to form a single noun is a common practice among many European languages, including German. In German, the definite article is called der bestimmte Artikel.Īs discussed in the previous lesson, German nouns have three types of genders.Ĭontrary to the English language, where the single definite article "the" is used for both genders, German has different forms of definite article for each of its three genders.įor masculine nouns, for example, der Mann (the man),įor feminine nouns, for example, die Frau (the woman),įor neuter nouns, for example, das Messer (the knife). We shall discuss other cases and declension in coming lessons step by step. This lesson is about basic forms of German articles without declensions i.e. In German, both definite and indefinite articles decline according to the respective grammatical case. Grammatical cases play a very important role in the German language.
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