German Language Course

10. Grammar - Accusative, present tense, sentence structure

Nouns

You have already learned that nouns in German have gender (der, die, das). If you want some hints on noun genders from the noun ending, below you can see the endings related to gender. Bear in mind that these rules don't always work and there are exceptions.

Gender	Typicall endings
DER	-ant, -ast, -ich, -ig, -ling, -or, -us
DIE	-a, -anz, -e, -ei, -enz, -heit, -ie, -ik, -keit, -schaft, -sion, -sis, -tät, -tion, -ung, -ur, -in, -frau
DAS	-chen, -icht, -il, -it, -lein, -ma, -ment, -tel, -tum, -um, -nis, -sal, -al, -an, -ar, -är, -at, -ent, -ett, -ier, -iv-, -o, -on

There are some rules for making plural from singular but these rules are not something you can depend on. For example most nouns ending in -e, form plural by adding -n, so for example Blume has the plural form Blumen.

Accusative case

Accusative case is used with objects in a sentence. You can have a very simple sentence like "I live." or "I sleep.", but in general you are doing an action on something. So a typical simple sentence would be SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT. Let us see a couple of such sentences:

Meine Wohnung hat einen Balkon.	My apartment has a balcony.
Ich habe eine Katze.	I have a cat.
Wir kontaktieren den Vermieter.	We are contacting the landlord.

Can you find SUBJECT (the one who does the action), VERB (the action) and the OBJECT (the destination/goal of the action) in these sentences?

Accusative is the case that is used in German language with objects. To form the accusative, you don't have to change the noun, you only change definite and indefinite article for masculine nouns. "Der" becomes "den", and "ein" becomes "einen". In previous examples we can see that balcony is a masculine noun, so the indefinite article changes to "einen". In the second example, the object is "Katze"(cat). This is feminine noun, so the article stays the same as in nominative - "eine". In the third example, we are contacting the Vermieter (landlord). This is a masculine noun and the definite article changes to "den".

Here is the table of definite articles in nominative and accusative:

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
N	der	die	das	die
A	den	die	das	die

Here is also the table for indefinite articles.

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
N	ein	eine	ein	-
A	einen	eine	ein	-

You saw in previous lesson how you can negate a noun, by using the word kein. This word behaves similar to indefinite article, it changes in difference cases, but it also has a version for plural. Here is the table for negation article "kein".

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
N	kein	keine	kein	keine
A	keinen	keine	kein	keine

Some prepositions are used exclusively with accusative. Here is the list of accusative prepositions: bis (until), durch (through), entlang (along), für (for), gegen (against), ohne (without), um (at, around).

We will talk about that more in future lessons, just remember for now that accusative is used if you want to indicate a direction of the movement. If you say that you are going somewhere, you will use accusative.

Present tense

We saw in the previous grammar overview how we can conjugate verbs in present tense. We saw that the verb sein (to be) is irregular and doesn't follow the pattern shown for regular verbs. There are unfortunately more irregular verbs.

In German language verbs can be strong, weak, or mixed. Weak verbs are regular and behave predictably, while strong verbs are irregular. Mixed verbs are somewhat irregular.

Here is the table with present tense conjugations of some common irregular verbs: sehen (to see), geben (to give), fahren (to drive) and laufen (to run).

	sehen	geben	fahren	laufen
ich	sehe	gebe	fahre	laufe
du	siehst	gibst	fährst	läufst
er/sie/es	sieht	gibt	fährt	läuft
wir	sehen	geben	fahren	laufen
ihr	seht	gebt	fahrt	lauft
sie	sehen	geben	fahren	laufen

Notice how "sehen" has it's first "e" changed to "ie" for "du" and "er/sie/es". Notice how in "geben" the first "e" is changed to "i" for "du" and "er/sie/es". Notice how in "fahren" the first "a" changes to "ä". And finally, notice how in "laufen" the first "a" is also changed to "ä".

What we see here is that in present tense irregular verbs are irregular for "du" and "er/sie/es". In other cases they follow the pattern for regular verbs. Also note the types of changes. The long "e" becomes "ie", the short "e" becomes "i", and irreglar verbs like to change their vowel by adding umlaut (two small dots) to it.

I can advise you to learn the "er/sie/es" (3rd person singular) version of a verb, together with the infinitive version of the verb. With time and practice you will learn how to use the proper conjugated version of verb in a sentence.

Compound sentences - how to combine two sentences together

Compound sentence structure is something that is typically taught in detail after you have some experience in German. But in order to read more than just trivial and basic texts, I believe you should get some information about this topic very early on. At least some basic information.

The first situation is when you use so called "coordinating conjuctions" to build so called "coordinated compound sentences". It all sounds fancy and advanced but this is actually a super simple thing.

If you want to join two standalone sentences into a single sentence you can do that using the following conjuctions: und (and), aber (but), oder (or) denn (because, for).

Let us now see a few examples:

First sentence	Second sentence	Joined sentence
Mein Name ist Peter.	Ich bin 30 Jahre alt.	Mein Name ist Peter und ich bin 30 Jahre alt.
Mein Name ist Hans.	Ich bin aus England.	Mein Name ist Hans aber ich bin aus England.
Ich sehe Filme.	Ich spiele Videospiele.	Ich sehe Filme oder ich spiele Videospiele.
Ich sprache English.	Ich komme aus England.	Ich sprache English, denn ich komme aus England.

If you want to combine two sentences with previously mentioned conjunctions, it is practically trivial. You just put the conjucation between two sentences and it works. Nothing changes in the sentences that are combined.

The second situation is when you use so called "subordinating conjuctions" to build so called "subordinating compound sentences". This is a bit more complex situation. Let us see an example:

First sentence	Second sentence	Joined sentence
Ich lese ein Buch.	Ich habe Zeit.	Ich lese ein Buch, wenn ich Zeit habe.

Here we see two sentences combined with the conjuction wenn which is a subordinating conjunction. The key difference is the change of the verb position in the subordinated clause (the sentence that is the addition to the main sentence or clause). The main sentence stays the same, while the verb in additional sentence is sent to the last place.

Other subordinated conjuctions, in addition to wenn (if) we just saw in action, that join sentences in this way are: als (when, in the past), dass (that, very often used), ob (if/whether), weil (because), während (while).