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German adjective endings | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5440 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 9 of 20 12 June 2009 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah sure, you have to do it online but it's really nice. It gives you a question where the answer is grammatical, for the example at the beginning it tests you on what kind of article should be used on which cases. I haven't got very far yet, only a week in (on the recommended settings it gives you 30 new questions a day taking about 3 months to cover everything.
http://www.supermemo.net.pl/course/deutsche_grammatik The course is all in German however so you need to have at least some basics as it doesn't teach you anything, just tests you and letting you practice and see your weaknesses. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kflavin Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5738 days ago 24 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French | Message 10 of 20 12 June 2009 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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The adjective endings are probably the hardest thing to really get a handle on but it helps to realize there is a certain logic. It helps to break them up into two groups nominative/accusative and dative/genitive.
Nominative: Masculine - (e)r, Feminine - e, neuter - (e)s (e.g. der, die, das, ein guter Mann, eine gute Frau, ein gutes Haus) Accusative: Masculine - (e)n, feminine - e, neuter - (e)s (den, die, das, einen guten Mann, eine gute Frau, ein gutes Haus) Those two are relatively ease but the dative and genitive present a bigger problem because they have different endings for the adjectives when the follow an article. The good news is that for both the adjective endings are always en and if there is no article they follow the same pattern as what the article would have been. The good news is that difference between masculine and neuter basically disappear and you're left with only two patterns to learn. So Dative masculine - (e)m, feminine - (e)r, neuter - (e)m (einem/dem, einer/der, einem gutem Mann, guter Frau, gutem Haus, einem guten Mann, einer/der guten Frau, einem/dem guten Haus) Genetive: masculine - (e)s, feminine - (e)r, neuter - (e)s (des, der, des, gutes Mannes, guter Frau, gutes Hauses, eines/des guten Mannes, einer/der guten Frau, eines/des guten Hauses) So the rules may be a bit complicated but there is a certain logic behind them. 1. No article - the adjective ending is the same was what the article ending would have been. 2. With the definite article the ending is -e in the nominative/accusative and -en in the dative/genitive. The one exception is the masculine accusative where it takes an -n. As a mnemonic you can picture a chauvinistic man having something done to him (accusative is the direct object so the verb is being done to it) and having him making a big fuss and refusing to follow the rules. 3. With the indefinite article the endings are mixed: in the nominative/accusative the adjectives act like there is no article and in the dative/genitive they act like there is a definite article. Now like I said, it's impossible to try to memorize these rules and then tack them on properly in spoken speech. So, I recommend you learn them, practice a bit and then you'll start catching your mistakes more and more until eventually it becomes second nature and you'll start making fewer and fewer mistakes. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kflavin Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5738 days ago 24 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French | Message 11 of 20 12 June 2009 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Whoops almost forgot to add that more words than ein(e) and der/die/das count as articles and what the plurals do.
4. Plurals always take -en after an article and plurals without an article follow the rules and take the ending the article would have had. 5. Definite articles count: Dies-, Jen-, Welch-, and jed- (this, that, which, and every) Indefinite articles count: possesives like Mein- and dein-, kein-, all-, solch-, and manch- (mine and yours, no, all, such, some) There you have it 5 rules to understand all German adjective endings. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5440 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 12 of 20 13 June 2009 at 10:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Kfavin =)
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| gili89 Newbie United States Joined 5084 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes | Message 13 of 20 02 June 2010 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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German adjectives describe nouns. German adjectives have two functions: They can be placed in the end or can be placed in the predicate of the sentence. For example, in the phrase “the beautiful home,” beautiful is attributive. In the sentence “the home is beautiful,” beautiful is predicative.
http://www.examplesof.com/adjectives 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| michamotor Tetraglot Newbie Germany Joined 5235 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: German*, Czech, French, English Studies: Hungarian | Message 14 of 20 03 June 2010 at 12:26am | IP Logged | ||
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There are some mistakes in kflavin´s post. You can find all endings in German here
http://deutsch.lingo4u.de/grammatik/deklination 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6714 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 15 of 20 03 June 2010 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here is a site that will teach you the German adjective endings and all you have to do is ask two questions:
German Adjective Endings - Ask Two Questions Edited by translator2 on 03 June 2010 at 3:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6744 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 16 of 20 16 September 2010 at 7:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry to revive an old thread, but I thought this might be helpful for anyone like me who has struggled with adjective endings.
I've studied a few resources that explain them (including this thread), and finally something in my head clicked: a way to simplify all those rules down to just 2 categories. It's nothing too revolutionary, just an alternate way of thinking about it that has worked for me. Please correct me if I've made any mistakes. ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------- The first thing I'd advise is to have your cases down cold. If you are trying to say the phrase 'with a nice man' in German, and you don't know the endings but you know automatically 'In this case, Mann is a DEM word' (mit dem Mann), that's half the battle. (Remember, some prepositions like 'in' change the case depending on whether it's static or directional!) OK, so let's assume you are easily able to tell which 'd-ending' (der, die, das, den, dem, etc.) to use at all times. This will be useful because there will always be an article OR adjective (but not both) using the d-ending before the noun. Generally,the leftmost element before the noun will take the d-ending. If you're using the definite article, obviously this will be the one to take the d-ending. (der Mann, dem Mann, etc.) No problem there. When there's only an adjective with no article, this adjective will stand in and take the 'd-ending' because someone has to. Guter Herr! Same with when there is only an indefinite article (like 'ein-'). In most cases, the indefinite article will stand in and take the d-ending. mit einem Mann für einen Mann I say 'in most cases' because there is an exception, but it's a pretty simple one. To explain it, I need to explain what I call 'easy cases' and 'hard cases'. The 'easy cases' are the ones you first learned in German: 'der, die, das, die'. In the accusative, 'die', 'das', and the plural 'die' are the same as in the nominative, so they're easy, too. (However, 'den' is different so it's considered a 'hard case'.) Dative, Genetive, and 'den' are all 'hard cases'. This chart shows the easy cases in bold: (Nom) der die das die (Akk) den die das die (Dat) dem der dem den (Gen) des der des der These 'easy cases' are the exception to the above rule (that a phrase with only 'ein-' before the noun will stand in and take the 'd-ending'). In these cases, the masculine and neuter d-endings are truncated, so only 'ein' and 'eine' are allowed. Thus we have mit einem Mann für einen Mann [d-ending + e/en] but Da kommt ein() Mann (rather than 'einer Mann'). Ich trinke ein() Bier (rather than 'eines Bier'). So, when there is only one word before a noun (whether it be the definite article, indefinite article, or a bare adjective), it will take the d-ending, except for in 'easy cases' where it's simplified so that only ein or eine are allowed. What do you do when there are two words before a noun (i.e. both an article and an adjective)? Generally, it's the leftmost word (the article) that takes the d-ending. The adjective will then take either -e if it's an 'easy case' or -en if it's a 'hard case'. Der gute Mann mit dem guten Mann Again, the indefinite article in the 'easy cases' are the exception. As mentioned before, only ein/eine are allowed, so it will refuse the d-ending and push it onto the adjective. So we get Ein gutes Bier Ein freundlicher Mann as well as a sentence I just came across in Lesson 30 of Assimil's German with Ease: Aber Natürlich, mein lieber Schmidt! [ein/eine only + d-ending] You can think of the d-ending as always attaching to the leftmost element unless it is the easy 'ein' or 'eine'. (These guys must remain true to their 'easy' label and reject such complicated endings! So the priority moves to the second element from the left, which is the adjective.) So it all comes down to two simple rules:
I hope this has helped! Adjective only (nom) Guter Gute Gutes [d-ending] Definite article + adjective (nom) der gute die gute das gute die guten (akk) den guten die gute das gute die guten (dat) dem guten der guten dem guten den guten ['easy cases': d-ending + e] ['hard cases': d-ending + en] Indefinite Article + adjective (nom) ein guter eine gute ein gutes viele gute (akk) einen guten eine gute ein gutes viele gute (dat) einem guten einer guten einem guten vielen guteN ['easy cases': ein/eine only + d-ending] ['hard cases': d-ending + en] Edited by Iversen on 17 September 2010 at 10:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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