Month: July 2013

Adjective endings/ inflections in German

More on adjectives 

Not long ago I wrote a blog about adjectives. This blog will also be about adjectives, but instead focus will be on German adjectives and their inflections. In German the adjective inflection depends on the case, number and gender as well as a determiner, if any.

Take this sentence for example:  The two black dogs live in a beautiful villa.

If we analyze the sentence then the black dog is our subject and it stands in Nominative case, live is our verb and in a beautiful house is ‘where they live ’ – here controlled by in+D. (In another blog post I’ll talk about prepositions and which case they take).

In order to make a correct sentence we need to know: the case, the gender of the noun and the number as well as which determiner stands before the noun. After a short analyze we can translate the sentence into German:

Adjectives: two(=zwei), black (=Schwarz, the +pl, Nom), beautiful (=schön, a +f, Dative)

Nouns:  the dogs (= Hund, pl+nom)  and a villa (=Villa, f+dative)

Verb: lived (wohnen,pl, present)

German: Die zwei schwarze Hunde wohnen in einer schönen Villa.

Below I’ve listed, which articles goes into which group as well as 3 tables showing the inflection/endings of the adjectives according to which article goes before the noun, if any.

Article-group (the/a/no article)

Der-Group (the)

  • der (definite article or demonstrative pronoun)
  • dieser
  • jeder
  • jener
  • aller
  • welcher
  • solcher
  • mancher
  • sämtlicher
  • beide (pl.)

Ein-Group (a)

  • ein
  • kein
  • mein
  • dein
  • sein
  • ihr
  • sein
  • unser
  • euer
  • ihr / Ihr

Definite article: der (the)

Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural
Nominative case der alte die alte das alte die alten
Accusative case den alten die alte das alte die alten
Dative case dem alten der alten dem alten den alten (*1)
Genitive case des alten (*2) der alten des alten (*2) der alten

Indefinite article: ein (a)

Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural
Nominative case ein alter eine alte ein altes (keine) alten(*3)
Accusative case einen alten eine alte ein altes (keine) alten(*3)
Dative case einem alten einer alten einem alten (keine) alten (*1, 3)
Genitive case eines alten(*2) einer alten einer alten(*2) (keiner) alten(*3)

 

No article

Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural
Nominative case alter alte altes alte
Accusative case alten alte altes alte
Dative case altem alter altem alten (*1)
Genitive case alten (*2) alter alten (*2) alter

More on dative and genitive

  • (*1) = In the dative plural, add an -n to the end of the noun, eg den kleinen Kindern
  • (*2) = In the genitive, add an -(e)s to the end of the noun, eg des alten Mannes
  • (*3) = kein/e/n is being used to show the plural because you can say ‘no shoes’ but not ‘a shoes’!

Punctuation rules

PunctuationPunctuation

Every time we write, translate or correct a text, we use punctuation marks. The main idea of punctuation is to divide the text into information blocks, which at the same time serves to make the text easier to read and thereby understand.

Punctuation has always been a tricky part of learning a language, e.g. some languages use the grammatical comma, where the comma divides the main and the subordinate clause. In other languages there is no comma between the main and the subordinate clause. However, you can also find languages, which doesn’t use punctuation at all. This is seen in the Thai language, where the words are written in one continual line or in the rune language, where a space was used to indicate a new sentence.

Where to use what?

I’ve uploaded a table that shows, where you use the different punctuation symbols in a sentence: Proper-Punctuation (Source)

The English punctuation rules

If you want to get a deeper knowledge of the English punctuation and grammar rules you can have a look at this homepage. Here you get all the rules and there is even a test that you can take at the end of each topic.

The Danish punctuation rules

Back in 2004 Denmark changed its traditional grammatical punctuation (like the one we know from e.g. German) to a more flexible punctuation rule (like the English, Swedish and Norwegian). The Danish punctuation rules are set by Danske Sprognævn (the Danish language council) and can be found in Retskrivningsordbogen (the Danish spelling dictionary).

Where the old comma divided the main and the subordinate clauses, the new gives the writer an option to leave out the comma between the main and subordinate clauses.  Because the rules are many I suggest that you have a look in the newest edition of Retskrivningsordbogen. You can also get an overview here.

If you want to test your Danish comma skills you can do so here.

/Sembach