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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.
German sentence structure is the structure to which the German language adheres. The basic sentence in German follows SVO word order. [1] Additionally, German, like all west Germanic languages except English, [note 1] uses V2 word order, though only in independent clauses. In dependent clauses, the finite verb is placed last.
Furthermore, it is probably due more to the late time of attestation of Germanic than to any inherent "simplicity" of the Germanic languages. As an example, there are fewer than 500 years between the Gothic Gospels of 360 CE (see Ulfilas) and the Old High German Tatian of 830 CE, yet Old High German, despite being the most archaic of the West ...
The Germanic system is not as flexible and allows for V2 to exist in it form, but the Slavonic system is relatively free. The rigid word order in the Germanic system causes the placement of the verb to be determined by syntactic rules in which V2 is commonly respected. [27]
This is similar to English grammar, though the primary verb is normally placed at the end of the clause. In both the examples shown below the auxiliary verb is irregular. I buy the book; Ich kaufe das Buch. I will buy the book; Ich werde das Buch kaufen. She will buy the book; Sie wird das Buch kaufen. I have bought the book; Ich habe das Buch ...
There are six tenses in German: the present and past are conjugated, and there are four compound tenses. There are two categories of verbs in German: weak and strong. Some grammars use the term mixed verbs to refer to weak verbs with irregularities. For a historical perspective on German verbs, see Germanic weak verb and Germanic strong verb.
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.
Unlike English, the German language distinguishes adverbs which qualify verbs or adjectives from those which qualify whole sentences. For the latter case, many German adjectives form a special adverb form ending in -erweise, e.g. glücklicherweise "luckily", traurigerweise "sadly" (from Weise = way, manner).