Archive for 'Grammar'
German nouns: gender hints Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 20, 2010
In German, all nouns have a particular grammatical gender. They can either be masculine (männlich), feminine (weiblich), or neuter (sächlich). The gender of a noun is indicated by its preceding article: „der“ (for masculine nouns), “die” (for feminine nouns), and “das” (for neuter nouns). Please note that not the thing or person is supposed to…
Writing the letters “ä”, “ö”, and “ü” without a German keyboard Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 13, 2010
There are three letters in German that do not exist in English. These are the Umlaute (umlauts) “ä”, “ö”, and “ü”. Although these letters do not exist in the alphabet, they play an important role in writing. Unfortunately, Umlaute cannot be found on all keyboards but there is no need to worry about that, seeing…
Separable Verbs II: Prepositions as prefixes Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 9, 2010
Separable verbs can be separated because they consist of two independent words, that is, they consist of the core verb and a particular prefix. The prefix is always either: a preposition, an adverb or an adjective. In the list below, you can find one example verb for every prepositional prefix. 1. ab- : 2. an-…
Family matters Posted by jan on Dec 6, 2010
Hi everybody. Today I want to show you some words that are about family. For this, just read the following (fictional) text. In the end I got some questions that you can answer through the comment field if you want!
Separable Verbs I: Draw the line between prefixes and core verbs Posted by Sandra Rösner on Dec 1, 2010
With this post I would like to start a series on German separable verbs. In this introductory post I explain how you can distinguish separable verbs from inseparable verbs. The main difference between separable and inseparable verbs is that separable verbs consist of two words: a core verb and a semi-prefix, whereas inseparable verbs consist…
German Abbreviations – Abkürzungen Posted by jan on Nov 18, 2010
Today I want show you some of the most important abbreviations in German language. Most of them are so common, that you don´t even realize that it´s an abbreviation while reading. At least when you´re living in a German spoken country. So when you read letters, tutorials, stories etc. in German, I´m sure that you…
Partizip I Posted by Sandra Rösner on Nov 1, 2010
The Partizip I is a form of word that is derived from verbs. It can have different functions in a sentence. For example, the Partizip I can be used as an adjunction, an adverb or a noun. Let’s have a closer look to how the Partizip I can affect our sentences. In German we can…