Archive for 'Grammar'
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…
Are you really ‘boring’ or just ‘bored’? – Using German “langweilig” correctly Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 2, 2011
I have recognized that some of you who practice their German on Facebook try to convey their feeling of boredom by saying: “Ich bin langweilig.” I assume that you simply wanted to express “I am bored.” But what you really said was this: “I am boring.” Whereas English distinguishes the precise meaning of whether you…
German ordinal numbers in use: Choosing the proper gender, grammatical case, and number (pt. II) Posted by Sandra Rösner on Nov 11, 2011
In my last post I discussed what adjectival endings you have to use when you use a noun with a definite article. Remember that ordinal numbers are grammatically nothing else than adjectives. That is, when you embed an ordinal in your sentence you have to modify it like any other adjectives. In this post I…
German ordinal numbers in use: Choosing the proper gender, grammatical case, and number (pt. I) Posted by Sandra Rösner on Nov 9, 2011
Ordinal numbers are not as common as cardinal numbers. But you need to use them whenever you express things that occur in an order or series. For example, in a hotel you may discover that your room is on the eighth floor. To properly use ordinals in German, you have to consider that ordinal numbers…
Wie man Deutsch lernt!? – How to learn German!? (Part I) Posted by Sandra Rösner on Oct 7, 2011
Very often people ask how they can learn or improve their German. Thus, I decided to tell you something about language and language learning, hoping that it will help you to overcome all the obstacles you could face. First of all, you learn German like most languages, too. 1. Accumulation of vocabulary The first step…