noun

Nouns are words for concrete things like a car, a house, a town etc., or an abstract idea like luck, type, honour etc.
German nouns have one of the three gender: maskulin, female or neuter. The first letter is always capitalized.

verb

Verbs are words that describe an action. They say what is happening. Every sentence has a verb.

adjective

adjectives are words that describe a property. They tell us how someting is.

pronoun

Pronouns represent a noun, a person or an action. They stand for something else.

article

Articles are companions to nouns. They tell us about the nouns gender and the function in the sentence.

preposition

verbs represent an action. Every sentence has a verb.

conjunction

Conjunctions tell us about the relationship that exists between words or sentences which are conjuncted .

adverb

Adverbs give an additional information about how something is happening.

to top

Let's have a look at the following exmaples.

The first and the second sentence have exactly the same meaning. "the english boxer" is the subject, because it is in the nominative case. "the American boxer" is object, because it is in the accusative. The position in the sentence does not matter, only the grammatical case does. This does not mean that the word order in the German does not matter. The contrary, they are very strict with regard to the verb. But the subject does not have to stand in front of the verb. Also, the object can appear at the beginning of the sentence.

to top

Peter hat sehr schön gesungen.

If you read or hear this sentence and do not understand the meaning of "gesungen", you must look up the word in the dictionary. But you will not find it. "gesungen" is a participle, but the dictionary lists only the infinitive. That is why you must always be able to derive the infinitive from the given form in a sentence.

to top