The

grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

of the

German language German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and Official language, official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switze ...

is quite similar to that of the other

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

. Although some features of German grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of English in that it has, among other things, cases and

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

in nouns and a strict verb-second word order in main clauses. German has retained many of the grammatical distinctions that other

have lost in whole or in part. There are three genders and four cases, and verbs are conjugated for

person A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations suc ...

and

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

. Accordingly, German has more

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

s than English, and uses more

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

es. For example, in comparison to the -s added to third-person singular present-tense verbs in English, most German verbs employ four different suffixes for the conjugation of present-tense verbs, namely - for the first-person singular, - for the informal second-person singular, - for the third-person singular and for the informal second-person plural, and - for the first- and third-person plural, as well as for the formal second-person singular/plural. Owing to the gender and case distinctions, the articles have more possible forms. In addition, some prepositions combine with some of the articles (e.g. In dem ---> Im). Numerals are similar to other Germanic languages. Unlike modern English, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese, units are placed before tens as in

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

Early Modern English Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModEFor example, or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transit ...

, Danish, Dutch,

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

and Frisian, e.g. twenty-one: one-and-twenty.

Nouns

Gender

Students of German are often advised to learn German nouns with their accompanying

definite article In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" ...

, as the definite article of a German noun corresponds to the gender of the noun. However, the meaning or form, especially the ending, of a noun can be used to recognize 80% of noun genders. For instance, nouns ending in the suffixes , , , or are always feminine.

Case

Articles

Adjectives

Declension of adjectives

Pronouns

Adverbial phrases

Verbs

Separable verbs

Conjugation

Modal particles

Sentence structure

German sentence structure is similar to other Germanic languages in its use of V2 word order.

References

Bibliography

* * * Wietusch, Gudrun (2006). ''Grundkurs Grammatik''. Cornelsen. * Pahlow, Heike (2010). ''Deutsche Grammatik - einfach, kompakt und übersichtlich''. Engelsdorfer Verlag, Leipzig.

External links

Deutsch-ueben tk blog
– German Grammar exercises for all levels with explanations in German.
German Grammar
– Toms Deutschseite – German grammar explained by a native speaker (in English)
German Grammar Lessons
– German grammar lessons along with exercises
Lingolia German Grammar
– German Grammar explanations with exercises
German grammar overview
German grammar (in English) (+ multiple choice test) explained by a native speaker. {{DEFAULTSORT:German Grammar