Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
German declension is the paradigm that German uses to define all the ways articles, adjectives and sometimes nouns can change their form to reflect their role in the sentence: subject, object, etc. Declension allows speakers to mark a difference between subjects, direct objects, indirect objects and possessives by changing the form of the word—and/or its associated article—instead of ...
German articles and pronouns in the genitive and dative cases directly indicate the actions of owning and giving without needing additional words (indeed, this is their function), which can make German sentences appear confusing to English-speaking learners.
Some modal verbs in German are: können, dürfen, müssen, brauchen, wollen, mögen, lassen. dorthin fahren können ("to be able to drive there") nach Rom fahren lassen ("let someone drive to Rome") A common misunderstanding among English-speakers learning German is caused by a divergence in meaning between English must and German müssen.
The strong declension was the declension of the original adjective, with some significant pronominal admixture in the adjective inflection, [17] while the weak declension was formed by replacing the adjective's own declension with n-stem endings identical to those of n-stem nouns.
German adjectives take different sets of endings in different circumstances. Essentially, the adjectives must provide case, gender and number information if the articles do not. This table lists the various endings, in order masculine, feminine, neuter, plural, for the different inflection cases.
The Germanic language family is one of the language groups that resulted from the breakup of Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It in turn divided into North, West and East Germanic groups, and ultimately produced a large group of mediaeval and modern languages, most importantly: Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish (North); English, Dutch and German (West); and Gothic (East, extinct).
The grammar of the German language is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages.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 in nouns and a strict verb-second word order in main clauses.
Main page; Contents; Current events; Random article; About Wikipedia; Contact us; Pages for logged out editors learn more