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Nouns are declined for case and grammatical number singular, plural. In German, all nouns are capitalized, not just proper nouns. German has all three genders of late Proto-Indo-European —the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter. Most German nouns are of one of these genders.
Nouns denoting a person, such as die Frau "woman" or der Mann "man" , generally agree with the natural gender of what is described. Thus these are not illogical, whereas das Weib old, regional or anthropological: Furthermore, in German, the gender of nouns without natural gender is not predictable.
For example, the three common pieces of cutlery all have different genders: Students of German are often advised to learn German nouns with their accompanying definite article , as the definite article of a German noun corresponds to the gender of the noun. As noted above, nouns ending in -chen or -lein are neuter. Many nouns starting with Ge- and ending in -e , as well as many nouns ending in -nis , -tum , or -sal , also are neuter.
A noun ending in -e is likely to be feminine; it is masculine when it denotes people or a few animals: A few nouns ending in -e are neuter, like das Ende "end". Similarly, a noun ending in -er is likely to be masculine der Teller, der Stecker, der Computer ; however, das Messer "knife" and das Wasser "water" are neuter, whereas die Mutter "mother" and die Butter "butter" are feminine. The German language has several different ways of forming the plural. Many feminine nouns are regular but many masculine and neuter nouns are not. For example, some plurals are formed with an "n" or "en", some with an umlaut and an "e", other plurals are the same as the singular, and some add "er" or an umlaut and "er".
Many loanwords as well as some dialectal or colloquial nouns, take a plural in "s" e. Some foreign endings, such as Latin -um, are deleted before the plural ending e. Sometimes the stress in the plural form is changed e. Special colloquial or dialectal plural forms also exist.
Unlike English, which has lost almost all forms of declension of nouns and adjectives, German inflects nouns, adjectives, articles and pronouns into four grammatical cases. The cases are the nominative Nominativ, Werfall, 1. Fall , genitive Genitiv, Wes[sen]fall, 2. Fall , dative Dativ, Wemfall, 3. Fall , and accusative Akkusativ, Wenfall, 4. The case of a particular noun depends on the grammatical function of the noun in the sentence. In earlier usage th century German words derived from Latin also had a vocative and an ablative case, and some words still have a vocative e.
In contrast to strongly inflected languages like Latin , German expresses cases more through the article which accompanies a noun than through the inflection of the noun; although the number singular vs.
Other exceptions of a suffix expressing the case of a noun along with the article are the forms of genitive and dative singular and dative plural. Yet, one could still say that transferring the case-information to the article preserved the German case system throughout its development from Old High German to contemporary German. Today, the use of the genitive case is relatively rare in spoken language - speakers sometimes substitute the dative case for the genitive in conversation.
But the genitive case remains almost obligatory in written communication, public speeches and anything that is not explicitly colloquial, and it is still an important part of the Bildungssprache language of education. Television programs and movies often contain a mix of both, dative substitution and regular genitive, depending on how formal or "artistic" the program is intended to be.
The use of the dative substitution is more common in southern German dialects, whereas Germans from northern regions where Luther's Bible-German had to be learned like a foreign language at that time use the genitive more frequently. Though it has become quite common not to use the genitive case when it would formally be required, many Germans know how to use it and generally do so.
Especially among the higher educated, it is considered a minor embarrassment to be caught using the dative case incorrectly. So it is not typically recommended to avoid the genitive when learning German: The historical development of the Standardsprache has to some extent re-established the genitive into the language, and not necessarily just in written form. For example, the genitive is rarely used in colloquial German to express a possessive relation e.
Furthermore, some verbs take the genitive case in their object, but this is often ignored by some native speakers; instead, they replace these genitive objects with substitutional prepositional constructions: A German book series called Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod "The dative is to the genitive its death" alludes to this phenomenon being called "genitive's death struggle" by the author in its title. As is apparent, the book uses dialect, i.
This is, by the way, not how most Standard German speakers would colloquially replace the genitive case; rather, this usage is prevalent in some German regional dialects, such as Bavarian. Standard German speakers would construct Der Dativ ist der Tod vom Genitiv , which is being literally the English " of the Genitive" incorrect in the Standard as well, but far less incriminating. Linguistically, the thesis of the genitive case dying out can easily be refuted. Indeed, the genitive case has been widely out of use in most dialects of the German language for centuries.
Only the replacement of dialects by a colloquial Standard German is new, and the use of the genitive case in the written language is unaffected.
There are, however, legitimate dative constructions to indicate possession, as in "Dem Knaben ist ein Buch zu eigen ". The construction zu eigen , virtually appears only in Latin beginners' translations, as the sentence should indicate puero liber est. Some dialects have "Dem Knaben ist ein Buch" which is literally a dativus possessivus. If a genitive is unmarked and without article practically, in the plural , usage of von , followed by the dative, is not only legitimate but required, as in: In that case, "Belange der Minderheiten" would contain a definite article, which does not reflect the intended indefiniteness of Minderheiten ; "Minderheiten" itself is an unmarked plural, i.
Additionally, the dative case is commonly used to indicate possession of bodily parts that are the direct objects of an action. Constructions such as Er brach sich den Arm. In English, this construction only occurs in the construction to look someone in the eye and its variants. The dative case is used for the indirect object of a verb. The sentence "Ich gebe meinem Sohn e einen Hund" "I give my son a dog" contains a subject "ich", a verb "gebe", an indirect object "meinem Sohn e "; and a direct object "einen Hund". Dative also focuses on location.
See accusative or dative prepositions below. German places strong emphasis on the difference between location and motion; the accusative case is used for motion and the dative for location. There are four important verbs that show this dichotomy: The case of a noun after a preposition is decided by that preposition.
Certain prepositions, called "two way prepositions", have objects either in dative or accusative, depending on whether the use implies position e. A German nominal phrase , in general, consists of the following components in the following order: Of course, most noun phrases are not this complicated; adjectives, numbers, genitive attributes, positions, relative clauses and emphasizers are always optional. A nominal phrase contains at least a cardinal number, an adjective, a pronoun or a noun. It always has an article, except if it is an indefinite plural noun or refers to an uncountable mass.
If the noun is uncountable , an article is not used; otherwise, the meaning of the sentence changes. A nominal phrase can be regarded a single unit. It has a case, a number, and a gender.
Katharina von Oppermann, eine attraktive junge Universitätsdozentin für Gesundheitswissenschaften, ist bei ihren Studenten sehr beliebt. Stress und seine. Das Traumpaar-Syndrom: So Überlebt Ihre Liebe Trotz Stress (German Edition) Mit ihrer einzigartig praktischen Methode haben sie sich international einen.
Case and number depend on the context, whereas the main noun determines the gender. A nominal phrase may have a genitive attribute , for example to express possession. This attribute may be seen as merely another nominal phrase in the genitive case which may hang off another nominal phrase. A direct translation of "Der Beruf des alten Mannes" would be "the profession of the old man. It is found in poetry, especially if helpful for metrical and rhyming purposes.
A nominal phrase may contain a "position phrase"; this may be seen as merely another nominal phrase with a preposition or postposition or a pronominal adverb see Adverbial phrases. The still-at-the-beginning-of-the-course-relatively-small-but-nevertheless-noticeable communication difficulties , the communication difficulties still relatively small at the beginning of the course, but nevertheless noticeable.
These are a feature of written particularly educated German. One also might hear them in the context of formal oral communications as well such as news broadcasts, speeches, etc. A nominal phrase will often have a relative clause. Aside from their highly inflected forms, German relative pronouns are less complicated than English. There are two varieties. The more common one is based on the definite article der , die , das , but with distinctive forms in the genitive dessen , deren and in the dative plural denen.
Etymologically this is related to English that. The second, which is more literary and used for emphasis, is the relative use of welcher , welche , welches , comparable with English which. As in most Germanic languages, including Old English, both of these inflect according to gender, case and number. They get their gender and number from the noun they modify, but the case from their function in their own clause.
The relative pronoun dem is neuter singular to agree with Haus , but dative because it follows a preposition in its own clause. On the same basis, it would be possible to substitute the pronoun welchem. However, German uses the uninflecting was "what" as a relative pronoun when the antecedent is alles , etwas or nichts "everything", "something", "nothing" , or when the antecedent is an entire clause.
The same applies to indirect questions. The inflected forms depend on the number, the case and the gender of the corresponding noun. Articles have the same plural forms for all three genders.
In relation to nouns, cardinal numbers are placed before adjectives, if any. If the number is relatively low, it is usually not combined with an indefinite plural article e. If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support? Read more Read less. Here's how restrictions apply.
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