The words that come in front of nouns need declensions. And we’ve gotta know that! Adjectives & other words that need declensions It’s those adjective endings ( declensions) that signal the case of the following noun. Here’s the thing: we have to know which case a noun is in, right? Otherwise sentences don’t have any meaning (or wouldn’t have clear, unambiguous meaning, anyway).īUT it’s not the noun itself that tells us which case it’s in … it’s the words coming in front of the noun that tell us the noun’s case!Īnd adjectives are one of those types of words that come in front of nouns! That’s nice’, you say … ‘but I thought we were talking about adjectives?’ How noun case and adjective endings intersect Look at our same German sentences about the kind man giving the sad dog a big bone:ĭoes this concept of cases = ‘slots’ make more sense now, I hope? But German can juggle the slots around - they can trade places without changing the basic meaning of the sentence. These cases are like ‘slots’ in a sentence that get filled in with nouns. There are 4 German cases for the different roles a noun might have: But in German - as you’ve seen - the nouns can be all shuffled around without it changing the sentence’s meaning. In English, it’s the position of each noun (relative to the others) that tells us who is who. If it weren’t for what’s called the German case system, we couldn’t know who or what is the subject doing something, or who/what is being acted upon, etc. It’s the noun’s case that tells us what role the noun is playing in the sentence. What is German noun case and why does it matter?
This German grammar fancy footwork that allows for such flexibility in sentence structure is all about noun case, a.k.a. Those ^^ are exact translations of the English example sentences, but all these work in German! They make sense! And they share the same meaning, too: ‘the kind man gives the sad dog a big bone.’ In German, however, because of declensions, we can say all three of those sentences:ĭer nette Mann gibt dem traurigen Hund einen großen Knochen.ĭem traurigen Hund gibt der nette Mann einen großen Knochen.ĭen großen Knochen gibt der nette Mann dem traurigen Hund.
Change the order like I did in those examples and the meaning of the sentence changes, too. Only the first sentence truly makes sense, right? That’s because, in English, we know who is who in a sentence because of rigid word order. The sad dog gives the kind man a big bone.Ī big bone gives the kind man the sad dog. The kind man gives the sad dog a big bone. They tell us, for example, who is the subject doing something to/for someone else.Ĭheck out these scrambled English sentences: German declensions or ‘endings’ on adjectives (and other words) tell us who is who in a sentence. But in German, those little endings we put on the tailends of adjectives tell us absolutely crucial information. No such thing as adjective endings (<– better word: declensions) exists in English.
German is a different type of language from English. To an English speaker, all of the fiddly grammar details of German can seem so unnecessary. Sooner or later, some tables are given all the same, – although most of the time they are very unmethodical.Īt the beginning of the intermediate level, it can happen that the textbooks simply provide 3 or 4 tables “to remember”.What you need to know to start getting the hang of German Adjective Endings Why do German adjectives need endings? Many textbooks try to totally avoid any tables and treat the adjective and several accompanying words only incidentally, in the hope that the students practice and learn the rules of the German adjective endings more or less unconsciously. And the textbooks most of the time don’t contain any better ideas. I’m not surprised! Very often we, teachers, give our students simply 3 or 4 tables, which they have to learn by heart. Every time I had to teach German adjective endings I was really happy that I had already learned it naturally as a child so, today I „just know“ how it works. This topic is one of the most difficult of basic German grammar, and I have never known a student who hasn’t struggled with it.
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