Deutschkurs von Jewli

As far as my progress in language school goes, I am still noticing some significant improvements in my understanding of German grammar. We still haven't really learned any words that I didn't already know, but it's kind of nice for me. It gives me a chance to focus on the grammar instead of trying to learn the grammar and a whole bunch of new words, like a couple of people in my class. Things are really starting to click, but German is truly a bizarre language.

This week's most useful lessons included how to go from the singular to the plural and the different forms of "it."

Here is your brief German lesson for the day:

Image from this site

Even though all nouns have die, der, or das associated with them in the singular form, all plural nouns use die. 

Example: der Kuchen is a single cake, die Kuchen is more than one cake.

If I say, "Ich habe der Kuchen," then you know I only have 1 cake, but if I were to say "Ich habe die Kuchen," then you would know I have more than one cake.




Some words change or add letters to make a word plural.

Example: der Apfel is a single apple; die Äpfel is more than one apple. 

                das Ei, is a single egg; die Eier is more than one egg.              

                der Mann is a single man; die Männer is more than one man.

Here the A changes to an Ä in both apple and men, but egg and men add "er" to the end. In English, it is most common to add an "s" or "es" to make a word plural. In German, an "n," "en," "nen," "s," "er," or "e" is added to the end and/or one of the vowels receives the addition of an umlaut (the two dots over the vowels) to make the word plural. OR, as in the example of Kuchen, the word may not change at all other than the form of "the" in front of the word. Are you confused yet? Yeah, welcome to the wonderful language of German. ha, ha!






Now that I've briefed you on how to make nouns plural, let me tell you how to refer to them as an "it!"


First you should know that German nouns are either masculine, feminine, or neutral. Some are obvious, like der Mann (the man) and die Frau (the woman), but others have no obvious connection to being masculine, feminine, or neutral.

Image from this site

die ---> feminine   

der ---> masculine

das ---> neutral     

Each form of "the" has a corresponding "it."

die ---> sie

der ---> er 

das ---> es

The plural form of die is the same as the singular in this case.

Example: Die CD ist neu. (The CD is new.)

             Sie ist modern. (It is modern.)

There is also a corresponding form of "a," if you wanted to say "a CD." It isn't the same as "a" and "an" in English. Instead of being determined by whether the word begins with a vowel or a consonant, the form of "a" is also determined by the form of "the" connected with that noun.

die ---> sie ---> eine

der ---> er ---> ein  

das ---> es ---> ein  

Example:  Das ist eine CD. (That is a CD.)


I hope that was interesting to someone. ha, ha. It has certainly helped me, particularly the information on making nouns plural. Just like in English, adding or removing just one letter can dramatically change the meaning of the word (ex. bread, read, tread), changing one letter in German can change the meaning of the word. So when I see die Säfte I can now deduce that it is the plural form of der Saft, which means juice. I know the singular form, der Saft, and the addition of the umlaut to the "a" and the "e" at the end of the word both tell me that the word is plural. The German word for bread is das Brot, and when I would see the word die Brote before this week, I would have though it was something completely different than bread. Now I know it means breads. Based on the ending of the singular form of the word, I can make an educated guess at how to make the word plural, which I couldn't before.

It's very exciting to be able to understand more of the conversations I am hearing on the bus every day based on the progress I am making in class. I'm very relieved to see that the class is effective. Going into it, I was a little disheartened about how prepared my hours of Rosetta Stone had made me to create new sentences, but this class is building on the vocab of Rosetta Stone and teaching me the grammar in a way that the computer program didn't.