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Tips and Notes: Capitalizing Nouns

This document provides an overview of some key aspects of German grammar, including: 1) All nouns in German are capitalized, and nouns have a grammatical gender of masculine, feminine, or neuter which determines the definite and indefinite articles used. 2) Verbs are conjugated according to person and number, with regular verbs following predictable patterns and the verb "sein" being irregular. 3) Umlauts and pluralization can impact word meaning and sounds, and the continuous aspect is not distinguished in verbs as it is in English.

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55 views

Tips and Notes: Capitalizing Nouns

This document provides an overview of some key aspects of German grammar, including: 1) All nouns in German are capitalized, and nouns have a grammatical gender of masculine, feminine, or neuter which determines the definite and indefinite articles used. 2) Verbs are conjugated according to person and number, with regular verbs following predictable patterns and the verb "sein" being irregular. 3) Umlauts and pluralization can impact word meaning and sounds, and the continuous aspect is not distinguished in verbs as it is in English.

Uploaded by

jannane
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Tips and notes

Capitalizing nouns
In German, all nouns are capitalized. For example, "my name" is "mein Name," and
"the apple" is "der Apfel." This helps you identify which are the nouns in a sentence.

Three grammatical genders, three types of nouns


Nouns in German are either feminine, masculine or neuter. For example, "Frau"
(woman) is feminine, "Mann" (man) is masculine, and "Kind" (child) is neuter. The
grammatical gender may not match the biological gender: "Mdchen" (girl)
is a neuter noun.
It is very important to learn every noun along with its gender because parts
of German sentences change depending on the gender of their nouns.
Generally speaking, the definite article "die" (the) and the indefinite article "eine"
(a/an) are used for feminine nouns, "der" and "ein" for masculine nouns, and "das"
and "ein" for neuter nouns. For example, it is "die Frau," "der Mann," and "das Kind."
However, later you will see that this changes depending on something called the
"case of the noun."
masculine

neuter

feminine

indefinite (a/an)

ein Mann

ein Mdchen

eine Frau

definite (the)

der Mann

das Mdchen

die Frau

Conjugations of the verb sein (to be)


A few verbs like "sein" (to be) are completely irregular, and their conjugations simply
need to be memorized:
German

English

ich bin

I am

du bist

you (singular informal) are

er/sie/es ist

he/she/it is

wir sind

we are

ihr seid

you (plural informal) are

German

English

sie sind

they are

Sie sind

you (formal) are

Conjugating regular verbs


Verb conjugation in German is more challenging than in English. To conjugate a
regular verb in the present tense, identify the invariant stem of the verb and add the
ending corresponding to any of the grammatical persons, which you can simply
memorize:
trinken (to drink)
English person

ending

German example

-e

ich trinke

you (singular informal)

-st

du trinkst

he/she/it

-t

er/sie/es trinkt

we

-en

wir trinken

you (plural informal)

-t

ihr trinkt

you (formal)

-en

Sie trinken

they

-en

sie trinken

Notice that the 1st and the 3rd person plural have the same ending as "you (formal)."

Umlauts
Umlauts are letters (more specifically vowels) that have two dots above them and
appear in some German words like "Mdchen." Literally, "Umlaut" means "around the
sound," because its function is to change how the vowel sounds.
An umlaut can sometimes indicate the plural of a word. For example, the plural of
"Mutter" (mother) is "Mtter." It might even change the meaning of a word entirely.
That's why it's very important not to ignore those little dots.

No continuous aspect

In German, there's no continuous aspect, i.e. there are no separate forms for "I drink"
and "I am drinking". There's only one form: Ich trinke.
There's no such thing as Ich bin trinke or Ich bin trinken!
When translating into English, how can I tell whether to use the simple (I drink) or the
continuous form (I am drinking)?
Unless the context suggests otherwise, either form should be accepted.

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