Archive by Author
Männliche Substantive im Deutschen erkennen: Teil 4 – Detecting German masculine nouns: part 4 Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jan 10, 2012
You are probably done for by my previous three posts because discussing the genders of German nouns is indeed no bed of roses. But the good news is that we are almost through that topic, at least with respect to masculine nouns. Anyway, in this post I exclusively focus on the endings of words, which…
Männliche Substantive im Deutschen erkennen: Teil 3 – Detecting German masculine nouns: part 3 Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jan 6, 2012
The grammatical genders of German nouns seem to be a pain in the neck for most foreign learners of German. Therefore, I would like to give you some hints whether a particular noun can be masculine, feminine or neuter in German. Subsequent to my two previous posts I will continue with masculine German nouns. In…
Männliche Substantive im Deutschen erkennen: Teil 2 – Detecting German masculine nouns: part 2 Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jan 4, 2012
In this post I would like to continue with my previous post in which I began to discuss how you can detect German masculine nouns. Today I would like to focus on those German masculine nouns that are not as predictable as the ones I discussed last time. Beside male humans, male occupations, and male…
Männliche Substantive im Deutschen erkennen: Teil 1 – Detecting German masculine nouns: part 1 Posted by Sandra Rösner on Jan 2, 2012
Learners of German often complain about the language’s three grammatical genders and their appropriate articles because it seems to be a torture to learn nouns and their associated grammatical genders. Therefore, I decided to address myself to this topic and give you some guidelines how you can match the correct gender and/or article to a…
German tenses in use: Futur II Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 27, 2011
The Futur II is used on different occasions. a) You use Futur II to refer to actions that will take place in the future and that will have been completed in the future. You form sentences with the conjugated form of the auxiliary verb werden (will), the past form of the verb, and the…
German tenses in use: Futur I Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 22, 2011
a) The Futur I is used to express that an action will only begin after the moment of speaking, especially when you are planning something or making prognoses. You form sentences with a conjugated form of the auxiliary verb “werden” (will). Singular Plural 1st person ich werde(I will) wir werden(we will) 2nd person du…
German tenses in use: Plusquamperfekt Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 19, 2011
The German Plusquamperfekt tense is equivalent to the English Past Perfect tenses (both the simple and the progressive form). Thus, you use this tense in order to refer to an action or actions that had happened before another action in the past. But the German Plusquamperfekt is seldom used in independent statements. It is rather…