2.4: 2.2-

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Einheit 2.2 (online)

Grammatik

Cases: The Nominative

You already know that all nouns in German are classified grammatically as masculine, neuter, or feminine, which is indicated by a form of the definite article: “der” (masculine), “die” (feminine), or “das” (neuter), all meaning “the”.

When we use a noun or pronoun in a sentence, we also assign specific cases to those nouns and pronouns to signal their function in the sentence. There are four cases in German. Today, we are focusing on the nominative case. Look at the following example sentences:

Die Tafel ist weiß.

Meine Partnerin heiβt Karla.

Das ist ein Buch.

Es ist blau.

Monique wohnt in Montreal.

The bolded parts are in the nominative case, because they are the subjects of the sentences.

*ACHTUNG* The subject of a sentence is always in the nominative case.

Übung 1. Drag the noun to the correct article.
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Grammatik

Definite and Indefinite Articles

German uses three definite articles, “der” (masculine), “die” (feminine), or “das” (neuter), all meaning “the”, to show the gender of a noun.

There are also indefinite articles in German, meaning “a” or “an” in English, for the three grammatical genders: “ein” (masculine), “eine” (feminine), and “ein” (neuter). Obviously, there is no indefinite article for the plural (just like in English, you couldn’t say “a books”).

Singular

Plural

masculine

der Tisch

ein Tisch

die Tische

Tische

feminine

die Lampe

eine Lampe

die Lampen

Lampen

neuter

das Buch

ein Buch

die Bücher

Bücher

der (m.) –> ein die (f.) –> eine das (n.) –> ein die (pl.) –> ∅

Übung 2 (Reminder: If you get it wrong you can correct it right away. Just continue typing in the “red” box to make your correction.)
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Grammatik

Negation with “kein”

There are several ways to express negation in German. Look at the following three sentences:

Ist das ein Tisch? Nein, das ist kein Tisch.

Ist das eine Lampe? Nein, das ist keine Lampe.

Sind das Amerikaner? Nein, das sind keine Amerikaner, das sind Kanadier.

The negative form of the indefinite article “ein” is “kein” (for masculine and neuter) and the negative form of the indefinite article “eine” is “keine” (for feminine). There is also a plural form “keine”. In English, they mean “not a”, “not any”, “no”.

masculine

ein –> kein

feminine

eine –> keine

neuter

ein –> kein

plural

∅ –> keine

We can also negate a sentence by using “nicht” (not). It can be placed in different parts of a sentence depending on what we want to negate or emphasize. Over the next few units we will begin to see the different placements of “nicht”.

Übung 3
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Grammatik

Plural Forms of Nouns

In English, most plurals are formed by adding an “-s” or “-es” to the noun (e.g., students, classes, pens), although there are some irregular plural forms in English (e.g., women, children, geese).

Forming the plural of nouns in German is a bit more complicated than in English. There are several rules one could memorize, but that wouldn’t account for the exceptions. We recommend that you learn the plural form of each noun when you are learning the noun itself: das Bücherregal, die Bücherregale.

Some dictionaries (like dict.cc as shown in the screenshot) write out the plural forms. Other dictionaries only indicate the plural form by abbreviations; you need to understand how to form a plural when you see those abbreviations, for example:

die Lampe, -n (this means: you just add -n to the noun; die Lampen is the plural form)

das Fenster, – (this means: you don’t add an ending to the noun; die Fenster is the plural form)

die Mutter, -¨ (this means: you don’t add an ending to the noun, just the Umlaut on the vowel; die Mütter is the plural form)

Online Wörterbuch. Use the online dictionary dict.cc to look up the plural forms of the following nouns. Put in the German word in order to get the plural form indicated as above. Or, if you put in an English word (if you need a translation first), click on the German translation provided and you will get the plural form on a separate page.