What all the charts on that long list above have in common are the very last letters that get put onto the words.Īnd those letters (-r, -e, -s, -n, -m) are declensions. I’m going to show you how! How The Chart Works If you do, you’ll be able to ‘plug’ the information into the All-In-One Chart to get the answer that you need. It might be a little more work up front, but understanding one chart instead of memorizing 10 different charts with just itty bitty differences is going to help you be a better German learner in the long run.ĭon’t find yourself being dependent on all these charts! Memorize the principles. Instead of memorizing chart after chart of the many possible solutions, we can simply memorize the formula which lets us ‘plug in’ any word that needs a declension and replace ALL of the charts listed above. That means that it’s possible to combine them all into ONE chart and just mention a handful of special exceptions - then all our bases are covered! All-In-One Declensions Chart The good news is that all these charts have much more in common than not. With 10 charts, that’s up to 160 words to memorize. For example, if you need to say ‘the’, there’s a chart for that!īut almost every chart has 16 words. Learning these individual charts can seem deceptively easy – all the work is done for you – it’s all spelled out. Mixed Adjectives (with ein-word Determiners) Possessive Adjectives ( mein, dein, etc.) You’d have all these charts thrown at you:ĭemonstratives / der-words (dies-, jed-, etc.) Traditionally, German students are introduced to lots and lots of separate charts for all the words that take declensions. The bolded letters themselves (<– the small changes!) are the declensions.Īnd that is how the meaning of the sentences changed even though the word order didn’t! Declensions, The Smarter Way In these examples, all of the words with bolded letters on the end are different forms of ‘the’.
(‘The man gives to the woman the child’)ĭe m Mann gibt di e Frau da s Kind. The words with bolded letters that come in front of the nouns are the ones that change - do you see it?ĭe r Mann gibt de r Frau da s Kind. Rather, the words that come in front of nouns indicate “who is doing what to whom” because of their declensions !Ĭheck out those same two sentences translated to German. In German, however, we don’t know which noun is in which ‘slot’ because of the word order. In English, we know “who is doing what to whom” because of word order.īoth of these sentences use the exact same components, but the meaning is changed because the word order is changed! How Sentences Work in German There are different ways of stringing information together so that it makes sense. It’s missing crucial elements that tell us how the man, the child, and the woman relate to each other. We couldn’t just say The man the child the woman, right? But, don’t worry, we’ll go over this step-by-step! Why does German use declensions?ĭeclensions matter because you can barely say anything beyond ja, nein, and hallo! without working with declensions. Whew! If you’re not already familiar with some of these concepts, this can sound a little overwhelming. Since declensions tell us the gender & case of each noun, declensions change dependent on if a noun is masculine, feminine, neuter, or plural AND dependent on if the case is nominative, accusative, dative, or genitive.
And the gender of the noun is an inseparable feature of the noun that has to come along for the ride. The case of the noun is how we know what role in the sentence it’s playing. The information that is packed into declensions tell us the gender & case of the noun.
German is an inflected language: we know who is doing what to whom in a sentence because of the declensions that ‘flag’ the role (e.g. In this way, English & German are very different.Įnglish is a analytic language: we know who is doing what to whom in a sentence based on word order. German uses declensions to provide crucial information about the nouns in a sentence - so that we can know who is doing what to whom. You can barely say anything beyond hallo without using declensions! The German language as such can’t exist without them.
GERMAN GRAMMAR NOMINATIVE ACCUSATIVE DATIVE GENITIVE HOW TO
how to always know which declension you needĭeclensions are vital.why declensions patterns bring much needed organization.working with ONE chart (not 10) for declensions.
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