#German adjective endings chart how to#

We have 2 forms of the genitive in English. He doesn’t possess them (in part because he’s dead), but, as the creator of them, does have (even from the grave!) a certain level of ownership over them. Similarly, ‘ Rembrandt’s paintings’ means painting by Rembrandt.

They’re not owned by the children per se, but in a broad sense, yes, those songs belong to the children (not to the adults). (English professors look away!)įor example, ‘ children’s songs’ means songs for children. to otherwise qualify or define a noun (a ray of hope)įor our purposes, let’s loosely define the genitive case as indicating possession.as the object of a verbal noun (the construction of the house).as the subject of a verbal noun (the landing of the plane / the plane’s landing).to talk about part of a whole (a slice of cake).The genitive case can be used in the following ways: The genitive case actually has a much wider range of usage (and there are other ways of indicating possession that don’t involve the genitive case). In English, the genitive is frequently also called the possessive case.

The first noun is part of, connected to, belongs to, or depends on the noun in the genitive case. The noun in the genitive case modifies (tells us something about) the other noun. The genitive case in English or in German shows a relationship between two nouns. Since we’re delving into the genitive case, I’ll give you a more thorough definition of it.

#German adjective endings chart how to#

Which means I will teach you - not only what the genitive case is and how to use it, but when to use it (and when to use a substitute for it).įirst, recall that the four cases indicate what role each noun is playing in a given sentence and, therefore, how each noun relates to the other nouns. That means you want to learn the genitive case (it does still have some merits!). So, what you need to know is that you really don’t have to learn the genitive case - you can manage everyday situations just fine without it. It is almost completely replaced by the dative case in everyday speech & writing. The genitive case is the fourth, final, and least used German case. when to use the genitive case and when/how to avoid it!.verbs, adjectives, and prepositions that signal the genitive case.how the genitive case works in both English and German.Go ahead, use it and if you found it useful, tell me if there are other infographics you’d like me to attempt. I want students to be able to make their own sentences, and if that means having a peek at an information sheet, do it! I don’t believe in students learning these grids by heart. So, this blog post will have just that – an infographic with all the cases, adjective endings and articles on one sheet. We would have liked to see them all in one place. Work we had previously done in a book had nice tables for each of those. What made it more complicated, sometimes they needed the definite articles, sometimes the indefinite articles and other times no articles. I thought about it recently when some students of mine were doing some exercises about prepositions and also about adjective endings in all the cases. A while ago I wrote a blog post about using crib sheets When is cheating not cheating? – not the ones you would use in an exam, but sheets with useful information for German learners.