German is a piece of cake!

German sources - news sites and more

2017-03-30T02:01:00.003+02:00

Hi guys,

when learning a language, getting a lot of input in that language is important. The more you get the better - but it's often not easy to find good sources. I got this for you. The following sources are not aimed at language learners but at native speakers. So if you just started learning German, they will be extremely difficult to understand. There's also another website that I want to share with you, that can help you to use these sources better for your endeavour of learning German - it can also be used for other languages.
One little disclaimer first: The mainstream of German news is quite liberal. If you want something on the spectrum of... let's say Fox News... this will be a rare find in Germany and it will only have a small audience.

Let's start with news sites and TV stations:

Tagesschau.de and ARD
Tagesschau is the German news. It's the thing your parents always watched in the evening when you were a child. They are known for their high quality and objectivity. This site is pretty much part of my daily routine and I can strongly recommend it.
Tagesschau itself is not a broadcaster. It's the news show of the "first German televion" ARD - German public tv station number one.
One big bonus: Many of their news articles have an mp3 version. So along with the text you get the read version of it.
It's not a private news broadcaster but governmentally funded (if you're living in Germany you'll have to pay for all the publicly funded news stations on a regular basis). They are no governmental puppets though but quite impartial.
Here you can find an overview of their most important articles they published during the last 7 days.
On their media center you can find lots of series, shows, movies and documentaries. It's all free.
I prefer to sort it by alphabet on "Sendungen a-z" to find what I'm looking for. One show I particularly like is "W wie wissen". It's an educational show that covers all kinds of topics. Every show covers one bigger issue and will then look at it from several angles.
Tagesschau also has an app.

ZDF
ARD is the first German public tv station, ZDF is the second. Not much more to say - their media center is integrated into their main website.

Arte
Arte is a smaller publicly funded tv station and a German/French cooperation. They do have excellent documentaries but they also have more artsy stuff that's just plain weird, such as this.

Let's go to the private newspapers:

die Welt
FAZ - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
die Zeit
Spiegel Online

Especially the first three are probably the most prestigeous German newspapers. If you want something more leaning into economics, then Handelsblatt might be for you.

Projekt Gutenberg
This project provides a lot of literature of which the copyright has expired. Most of it is free and there is also a wide range of German classics among them - but also many books in other languages.

LingQ
This website is a nice little tool for learning languages. It's hard to use if you're learning a language from scratch, but once you're a bit more familiar, it can prove really useful.

It pretty much works like this: You choose one of the existing texts or import your own (such as a news article - adding mp3 files is also possible). On lingQ you can then read the text and can add translations to words or phrases. LingQ will recommend translations based on their integrated dictionary or the translations that have already been used by its user base. A word/phrase with your personal translation becomes a "lingq". Every lingq is marked in the text and has a level ranging from 1-4, depending on how well you know it. You can let lingq send you a daily list with "words of the day", consisting of your lingqs for review. This way you only get to review words that you actually need in the texts you read.
If you've learned the word and are familiar with it, you can mark it as known. It then won't be highlighted anymore and will not be sent to you in your "words of the day"-list.

The website learns along with you and it remembers words for the texts to come. So for every new text it can tell you how many words you already know - and how many you don't. This can help you assess if a text might be manageable or maybe a bit too difficult for you at your current state.
This website is not entirely free though. The amount of lingqs is limited in the free version. Words you learned are not counted as lingqs though, so if you run out of free lingqs, you can simply learn the ones you already saved, to make space for new ones.

Back to Overview

List of Conjugations

2015-08-10T03:04:00.002+02:00

Good news everyone!

For all those of you who struggle with conjugations and tenses I made a list with the 30 most common German verbs and their conjugations.

The list is still subject to change however, so all feedback is highly appreciated. Is there some information missing that you consider to be important? Are there other important verbs that are not yet part of the list? Simply add a comment and let me know.

I plan on incrementally extending the list, so some new words will be added every now and then. I hope this list proves to be helpful and that you use it whenever you struggle with a verb.

Greets

Alex

Difference between wie and als

2014-05-03T21:05:00.004+02:00

I wished this post wasn't necessary, but sadly it is. It's actually not even a problem that most language learners that learn German as a second or third language struggle with. It's the natives - or at least some of them that seem to have problems with it.

The difference between "wie" and "als".

It's one of my pet peeves and it gets very tiresome once one of your friends insists on using those simple words the wrong way.

Let's find out the right way to use them first.

In this instance, both words are used to make comparisons. Let's start with "wie".

"Wie" means "as"; well, actually we're using "so ... wie", which means "as... as" here. I'll give you an example so you know what exactly I'm talking about:

"This tree is as tall as a house." (English) yeah, I guess you noticed ;-)

"Dieser Baum ist so groß wie ein Haus." (German)

(So "so ... wie" is used to show that one aspect of two things is similar. There's no need to further explain the sentence since the sentence structure of both sentences is identical here.)

This kind of comparison in which one aspect of two things (or people) always works the same way. Sure, you can vary the sentence a little, but essentially it always works like mentioned above. It doesn't matter whether it's about speed, height, or taste.

I'll give you some more examples below (including a translation) that can all be used the same way:

as fast as - so schnell wie
as dark as - so dunkel wie
as sweet as - so süß wie (sweet can be used same as in english, so it can be about taste, but it can also describe "sweet" people for example)
as greedy as - so gierig wie

Difficult? Nah, I don't think so.

Let's take a closer look at "als" now.

In this case, "als" simply means "than" and is also used in comparisons. Is it more complicated?

Well, see for yourself.

I am taller than you. (English)

Ich bin größer als du. (German)

(Once again the structure in English and German is similar.)

It's easy to see: "als" is used to show that two things are not equal regarding one aspect. So if you want to show that one thing is bigger, taller, smaller, slower, faster, or whatever than something else, just go ahead and use "als".

Once again:

"so ... wie" - is used to describe similarities

"als" - is used to describe differences
(this does not count for negated sentences of course)

Now you know how to do it, so I'll also show you how not to do it?

"Ich bin größer wie du."
that's how. (correct versions would be: "Ich bin so groß wie du." or "Ich bin größer als du.")

Oh god, I feel so dirty right now.

You probably noticed yourself that this language-sin I just committed is a mix of what we just learned. Mixing things can result in something good when ordering a cocktail, but in this case, it doesn't.

You'll find several people in Germany that constantly speak that way. That doesn't make it right though. I'm not even sure if it's sth. related to regional dialects or just about people that don't know any better. The only thing I know for sure is that it's something that can drive me into insanity.

Don't let those people confuse you. I recommend you never to ask those people any language-related questions. It might cause their head to explode and you surely don't want to be responsible for it (and for cleaning up the mess afterwards).

Got any questions or something to add? The comment section is free of charge, so don't hold back and drop me a few lines.

Numbers (1 - 100)

2013-05-26T05:52:00.000+02:00

42, 155, 32 and 5.

Easy, right? Why did you even check this blog entry? You know all the numbers!
Ah well ok, let's be fair. Maybe it's not that easy after all. But you can literally count on me here, I'll show you how German numbers work.

Gladly numbers are a pretty logical and systematical thing. Once you got the system it's an easy game. Let's go to the basic numbers first. Sorry, you'll have to learn these by heart if you don't want to be scammed at the local flea markets ;)

0 - Null
1 - Eins
2 - Zwei
3 - Drei
4 - Vier
5 - Fünf
6 - Sechs
7 - Sieben
8 - Acht
9 - Neun
10 - Zehn

That's not difficult, right? I'm sure you can learn these guys quickly. I strongly recommend you to make sure to know those numbers really really well. If you learn them by counting them up repeatedly like "one, two, three, four, ..." you might encounter some difficulties when it comes to independent single numbers. I learned the chinese numbers in this "counting" way. This way I was able to learn the numbers quickly, but when somebody asked me what a 7 sounds like in chinese then I had to count "yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi" to know that the seven is qi.
So be smarter than I was - learn those numbers independently and don't just learn them by counting. You may also solve simple math problems like 3 + 4 = 7 --> Drei plus Vier gleich sieben
This may help you to get to know them a little better. ;)

11 - Elf
12 - Zwölf
13 - Dreizehn
14 - Vierzehn
15 - Fünfzehn
16 - Sechzehn
17 - Siebzehn
18 - Achtzehn
19 - Neunzehn

Ah, what do we have here? They already look a little familiar, right? Till now they're actually pretty similar to the English numbers. four-teen = vier-zehn; nine-teen = neun-zehn
Even twelve and zwölf sound a bit similar, like some distant relatives.

Still can't get enough of German numbers? It's going to get real German now: German numbers above twenty follow a different concept than English numbers, but see for yourself.

20 - Zwanzig (that's still ok)
21 - Einundzwanzig (it's really just one single word)

22 - Zweiundzwanzig
23 - Dreiundzwanzig
24 - Vierundzwanzig
25 - Fünfundzwanzig
26 - Sechsundzwanzig
27 - Siebenundzwanzig
28 - Achtundzwanzig
29 - Neunundzwanzig
30 - Dreißig
40 - Vierzig
50 - Fünfzig
60 - Sechzig
70 - Siebzig
80 - Achtzig
90 - Neunzig
100 - Hundert (or: Einhundert)

In German the low numbers (in 21 to 99) are spoken first.

English:
twenty - three (20 - 3)

German:
drei und zwanzig (3 und 20) (but it's actually just one word, so you write dreiundzwanzig in case you want to write it)
"und" means "and" so the number is literally "three and twenty".

Not so difficult, right?
If you payed close attention then you might have noticed that all those zero-numbers like 20, 40 and 60 end by "zig", except for Dreißig, that's simply because Dreizig would sound stupid. It's same with Sechzehn and Siebzehn. Saying Sechszehn and Siebenzehn would sound very odd.

From twenty on the numbers (up to 100) always follow the same logic, i.e. 32 is Zweiunddreißig.

Down below you can check if you understood the concept. There are three numbers. Think for yourself how to say those numbers in German. You can see the solution when marking the line.

55 - Fünfundfünfzig (solve me)

78 - Achtundsiebzig (solve me)

36 - Sechsunddreißig (solve me too)

Everything correct?
Feel free to leave me a comment and have fun with the German numbers.

The difference between zu, nach and in - all you need "to" know

2012-04-03T23:02:00.004+02:00

Ever wanted to go to another city or to one of your friends?
Ever thought it makes a linguistic difference? While in English it doesn't, German is a little different... again. There are two words in German and they're actually pretty different. The heroes of this article are nach and zu (well... "in" is sth. like a sidekick I guess).

nach and zu both mean "to" but they're not interchangeable.

You use nach when going to a specific city, country or continent. (except for Antarctica... in case this is a continent to you) Still you should be careful here, because you only use "nach" when using the name of that place. So you go "nach London" but "zu" a city. Same counts for continents and countries. Always when not mentioning the specific name but just saying "this country" or so... you'll have to use zu.

Using "zu" is pretty easy because you can always use it when not using "nach". Well... always except when emphasizing that you enter a building. Then you will use "in". When going downtown, you'll also have to use "in". In German this would be: "Ich gehe in die Stadt." or "Ich gehe in die Innenstadt." (Stadt = city; Innenstadt = city center or "inner city")

I used "zu der" for the sake of simplicity. Actually "zu der" becomes "zur", so people would normally say: "Ich gehe zur Bibliothek."

So when going to the library, in and zu are basically interchangeable, since you're usually going to enter the library when going to it. In case you're going there to meet a friend of yours in front of the library, then "zu" is the right choice.

"Ich gehe zu der Bibliothek um dort einen Freund zu treffen."
"I'm going to the library to meet a friend (there)."

Some Germans even don't get the difference between "zu" and "nach". They'll say stuff like "Ich gehe nach Aldi." (Aldi is a popular supermarket in Germany... since supermarkets are no countries, no matter how popular they are... "zu" is actually the right word) If you ever hear a German saying something like that to you, you have only one choice. Start screaming and run for it - don't let him ruin your grammar! ;)

Expert Tip:
Some word-combinations merge into one single word. This is the case with the following words.

zu der = zur (Ich gehe zur Bilbiothek. / "I go to the library.")
zu dem = zum (Ich gehe zum Supermarkt. / "I go to the supermarket.")
in das = ins (Ich gehe ins Haus. / "I go into/enter the house.")

While zu der and zur (etc.) have the exact same meaning, it's actually best to use those compound words (zur/zum/ins) whenever possible. People are far more likely to say "Ich gehe zum Supermarkt." instead of "Ich gehe zu dem Supermarkt.".

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Yes we can... - be polite - The difference between du and Sie

2012-04-03T20:35:00.000+02:00

"It must be my wrinkles...! I'm sure it's them! Or is it my hair!? I bet it's already turning grey!"

That's how people make me feel that start the online-conversation with "Guten Tag, wie geht es Ihnen?"*. God...! I am not that old guys! Well... but first things first! In German we've got two ways of saying "you". One form is formal, the other one is... well... less formal. I proudly present those two forms to you:

I know it's pointless to give an English translation here...

Well, seems like you cannot translate everything, right? Distinguishing between the two ways is pretty easy though. It's more or less the equivalent of calling somebody by his first name or by his family name. So you'll say "du" to Bob but you'll say "Sie" to Mr. Smith (Herr Schmidt would be the German equivalent of Mr. Smith).

Still you guys should be careful, especially when being from the US. We've got a little cultural difference here! Modern English lacks of this formal way to refer to a person and usually people will start using the first name quickly. So your business partner Mr. Smith might soon become your good old pal Bob. In Germany he would probably stay Herr Schmidt for much longer, maybe even for the rest of your life.

"Sie" is usually used when talking to people of respect or that you have a professional relation with. Business partners, teachers, your boss or strangers (adults) are usually among this group. Using "Sie" shows a certain amount of distance and is pretty impersonal. In case people might have to evaluate you they might also use "Sie" to keep a distance and to prevent personal feelings from influencing their evaluation. (god... that sounds so German)

I strongly reccomend you to use "du" when talking to friends, family members, random people on the web and kids or young people. In case you're a university student better use "du" when talking to other students. Even the German freshmen often confuse it, especially when talking to those poor postgraduates.
It also happens that people offer you the "du" which goes along with calling them by their first name.

"Hello, Mr. Smith!"
"Call me Bob!"

As you can see we can be really polite! It might still sound like shouting and yelling... but it might be the most formal yelling you will ever hear.

*Another thing you should also know is that using "Guten Tag" is also a pretty formal way of saying hello. "Hallo" is perfectly fine in most situations, especially the less formal ones.

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Bubble tea - why some things should not be translated

2012-03-21T11:30:00.015+01:00

In Germany, bubble tea really got popular these days. So I bought some to try it. Cold drink for hot summers - nice! The only thing that worried me a bit were the anime-styled crabs on the cup which were just way too cute for a guy. It made me feel like a teenage girl.

This stuff is really called “Bubble Tea” here, and as you can easily see: that does not sound very German!
There are many words in German which we simply don’t translate. The English words are often kept. This sometimes has the effect of sounding more modern, “cooler” or… well… at least less crappy.

There simply are some things that better remain in their original language. “Bubble Tea” is one of those words too. While the English name sounds trendy and modern, directly translating it into “Blasentee” makes it sound very… popular for the generation 70+. Blasentee is a word that already exists and which people use that have a troubling bladder. Since “Blase” can mean “bubble” and “bladder” alike this is a coincidence that might… go along with marketing problems.

Modern things or technical devices are usually not being translated. A laptop is still a Laptop in German for example (except for the capitalization part).

There’s a crazy habit in Germany which is… translating English words... into English.
So how does that work? It’s actually pretty easy: You take an English word and then you change it into another English word. So… in Germany a mobile or cellphone is a “Handy”. Most Germans don’t even know that this is the germanized version of this word. Even less people know that what is called a “Beamer” in Germany is actually a “projector” in "real" English. So in case some German people are using these words… now you know what they're talking about.

I’m not sure about the reasons for these changes so I can only guess. When saying "Projektor" most Germans are usually talking about slide projectors or maybe overhead projectors. Those things are not really modern and "beamer" just sounds really fancy for German ears. So the name was probably changed for marketing reasons.

There are also words which are being used in English although they're originally German. Doppelgänger is one example for such a loan word. Looks really familiar, right? Well... except for the Umlaut.

So be careful with what you order in Germany and don't try to translate every word you know. Otherwise you might end up drinking the wrong kind of "bubble tea"... or worse.

Feminine nouns - gender bending for starters

2012-03-20T15:13:00.269+01:00

They're everywhere! You can see them on the streets, in offices, on TV ... and about 50% of the people even see them in the mirror: Women

No surprise that they are also part of the German language. In German basically all nouns that describe a person also have their female form. So a baker, a manager or a customer - all got a male and a female version. I'll show you how to do it first and then I'll explain things a little further.

Usually it's very easy: You add "in" to the noun... and it suddenly becomes female. For plural you simply add "innen".

be careful of umlauts!

But if there were no exception it wouldn't be German! You can see it up there. In "Ärztin" the a changes into an ä. Why does it change and how to predict? Well, if the plural form of the noun changes its vocal into an umlaut, the female form will usually do the same.
So how do you know that the plural form changes from vocal to umlaut?
That's the problem... I don't think there's a rule for that. (If there is, please let me know!)

There is (at least) one more exception. This one is pretty easy (and reasonable... yes... German can be reasonable at times!). There are some nouns that imply the gender.
Kaufmann (businessman) ends with "mann" for example. Since Mann means "man" it pretty much implies that the person is male. You can change the "Mann" into "Frau" (woman) and then it becomes a "Kauffrau", which would be the right word for a female person of the same occupation. There are several words that end with "mann". It's always the same there.

Kaufmann = businessman

The word "Krankenschwester" (nurse) (Schwester = sister) won't become a Krankenbruder (Bruder = brother) though. This occupation was typical for women for so long, that there's no male equivalent. So people had to make up a new word for it. "Krankenpfleger" is this new word. So how to make it be female again? Right! You can simply add "in" and you got a "Krankenpflegerin" which is totally correct too.

Female forms can be used for women only. The male forms are a bit more neutral, at least this is how I feel. You can sometimes use the male form to refer to a female person too but I recommend you to try to use the correct form.

You might wonder how to refer to a group that's not entirely male or female. Well... real grammar says that a group that entirely consists of women will be referred to with the female form. As soon as there's one male person among them, male form has to be used. It's the same in many other languages. For occupations that imply the gender it is much better to say sth. like "Kaufmänner- und Frauen" though, so this would imply both.

Sadly some people don't seem to care about grammar. There's this new habit in Germany to... "unisex" words. It's really annoying and looks and sounds horrible. This was a political decision that really gives me the shivers.
That's how you do it:

Studenten = (university) students

So you add an "Innen", the i has to be capitalized. Seriously... I am all for equal rights and stuff... but don't mess with my grammar! You even have to do that in scientific papers now. (well... there are ways to avoid that though) Once more to make it clear. The "male plural" form does not exclude females, it simply doesn't say clearly whether there are women among the group or not. I think it's similar in French, Portuguese, Spanish and even Chinese. I'm not sure if the "Innen"-thing exists in Germany only or in other German speaking countries too.

So now you got the basics for the grammatical sex change in singular and plural and even know the plural of political correctness. Use and share it as much as you like, it's all yours now!

Conjugations

2012-03-20T00:55:00.004+01:00

In German, same as in English, the form of a verb will change, depending on who is performing the action. That’s what we call conjugation. There’s one difference though: In German, verbs are shifting and changing way more often! I’ll give you a table along with two examples:

Ich gehe zur Schule. - I go to school.
Er geht zur Schule. - He goes to school.

p.s. = person singular; p.p. = person plural

So while there are 2 different English forms to remember, there are 5 German ones. This word still looks pretty regular. You always have the "geh" part and then the ending of it changes. You will probably not find it hard to see that all those words are related since the "root"* always stays the same. (since they're all the same word).
*The first part that doesn't change is the "root" of the word.

When looking a word up in a dictionary, always go for the infinitive. I'm pretty sure you know that already, but many people make this mistake and end up complaining why their dictionary doesn't contain the word "geht".

Almost all infinitives are formed by adding "en" to the root.
So here it works like this: geh + en = gehen
Voila, that's our infinitive! There are exceptions where it doesn't work though, but most times you will be safe.

There's one exception that I want to show you right away because it's just... so important.

This one is as irregular as it gets. You will have to use it all the time, so it's really worth learning it. This is one of the things you should know so well that you won't even have to think about it for a second. Believe me, this will automatically eliminate a big source of frustration and is going to make your life easier. (and it will also make the world a better place... hopefully)

For additional tables you can either go to IKEA or check out the list of Conjugations that I made. Feel free to send me comments and wishes for verbs which you want to be conjugated.

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Indefinite Articles

2012-03-13T14:45:00.030+01:00

Indefinite articles work similar to definite ones. The article you need to use depends on the gender of its noun. It works as the following:

As you can see there are only 2 indefinite articles. Male and neutral nouns share "ein", while "eine" is used for female nouns only. Girls really like to be special, so they got their own article! Too bad that even potatoes and cucumbers are female in German while girls are actually neutral. (You can find further explanation concerning "grammatical gender" at the last half of this article)

You can also negate the indefinite articles which looks like the following:

Ich habe keine Katze. - I've got no cat.
Ich habe eine Katze. - I've got a cat.

Keine is not just used to negate female nouns, it's also required for negating the plural. Be careful, because the use of "kein" and "keine" is much more limited than the use of the English "no". There's another way you can put it.

I hope you'll enjoy your brandnew articles. Feel free to leave me a comment and have a nice day!

Nouns

2012-03-13T14:12:00.031+01:00

Nouns are a simple thing in German, there are just a few little things you should keep in mind.

Nouns have to be capitalized.
Doing so will make the world a better place... probably. Gladly there are no exceptions here, so always capitalize the first letter of a noun. Please don't capitalize all letters, shouting nouns at people won't make your German sound more right. (really!)
Plural nouns often end with an e.
Often does not mean always. Simply adding an "s" to form the plural grants you a 97% chance to do it wrong. Words that end with an "e" will often form their plural by adding an "n".
The grammatical gender usually doesn't make any sense.
Each noun has its own grammatical gender, but it seldoms correspond with the real gender. The grammatical gender will determine the correct article for each word.

Want to know more about nouns and everything around them?:

Latest article about nouns

Umlauts - two dots that make a difference

2012-03-13T13:55:00.157+01:00

Many love them, some fear them and few can type them. The German umlauts (Umlaute) ä, ö and ü are not the only ones I will show you. I will also present the ß to you. It might look like a beta, but actually it's pretty different. Umlauts can be pretty important because some konjugated forms contain them although the infinitive doesn't. This can also happen with plurals like in Maus and Mäuse (mouse - mice).

How to type them?
When using windows there actually is a way for you to type them. Depending on your windows version it might differ a little, but usually you can find it in the regional and country specific options. You can change the language settings of your keyboard there and add German as the "language" of your keyboard. Don't worry, it's no problem to switch back. Just alt + shift will do the job and your keyboard is back to... whatever it was.

This is how a German (well... mine...) keyboard looks like.

You can see the location of the umlauts here, same as you can see that the ß is next to the zero. Location of z and y also differ.

Too much work? Well, there's another option for you.

That's how you can also do it:

ä -> ae
ü -> ue
ö -> oe
ß -> ss

Writing ae instead of ä is also totally correct. Writing a instead of ä is wrong though because... well... because ä and a are simply not the same thing. ;) When doing a German crossword puzzle this is how you do it too. (and please never use a "B" instead of ß... that's really odd. It's like using a P instead of an R. Just one stroke is missing but... well... still not really the same, right?)

Enough writing, let's go oral. So how to pronunce them?
Let's start with the ß. When actually saying "ß" you say "s-z" (es-zet - german pronunciation of course). The ß is a long hissing sound. Different than the ß the "ss" is a short hissing sound. (so using ss instead of ß is actually not always right... but it will have suffice in case you have no german keyboard). Still, when reading a text you will get a good hint about how things are pronunced when knowing that difference.

I will further explain the pronunciation in another post soon.

So for now... have fun with your brandnew umlauts!

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Capitalization

2012-03-13T13:54:00.057+01:00

Nouns have to be capitalized. Always.
Well... that's about it, there is not much more to tell. ;)

I'll give you some examples anyway:

"The Table is in the Kitchen.
"The Cat belongs to Tom the Butcher."
"Tom is german."

This is how you do it in German. Names and nouns are written in capital letters, adjectives are not. The German language doesn't care about nationality, so adjectives that describe it are still adjectives and will be written in lower case letters.

At German elementary schools nouns are taught as "name words" (Namenwort), because they need to be written in upper case letters, same as in English. Take special care of nominalized words, those are verbs or adjectives which have been transformed into nouns. They have to be capitalized too and can be a bit tricky.

Another English example that uses German style orthography:

"He is so strong. His Strength is amazing."

So why are we capitalizing nouns?
It all began in the early 12th century... well... ok, it didn't. Actually I think there is no reason to do so. Some people say it's easier to read texts then and that capitalizing nouns is adding some kind of visible structure. Well... I guess English (and basically all other languages) have proven this theory wrong. Probably people have simply gotten used to it and don't want to change. Since capital letters look nice in the written language let's be happy that we have a few more opportunities to use them. Hooray to the nouns!

Well... now you have the knowledge it takes to become a real capitalist and to capitalize everything you want. Have fun with this little piece of information and feel free to leave me a comment, preferably with capitalized nouns!;)

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Der, die, das - the definite articles! (The difference between der, die, das)

2012-03-13T01:57:00.006+01:00

One article is not enough! At least for the German language. Der, die, das are the (in)famous German articles that make all langauge learnes tremble in fear. They even made it into the German intro song of the Sesame Street. There's no mercy, not even for children.

So why does the German language need 3 (definite) articles? Let's make it quick and simple:

The use of the article depends on the grammatical gender of the noun. So you use "der" for everything that's male, "die" for everything that's female and "das" for everything that's neutral. So why is it called "grammatical gender"?

You're going to love this part: The "gender" and the "grammatical gender" (aka genus) often have nothing in common at all! Men are male and women are female, that's ok so far. But girls are neutral, tables are male and cups are female. It makes absolutely no sense!

But there must be a trick, right? Sure, there's a rule that always works and prevents any mistakes! It's... well... nah, there isn't. There's no such thing. There are many "rules" or "guidelines", but they tend to have one tiny flaw: They don't work. Well... they do sometimes work but most of them are not reliable and no native speaker ever uses them. (except for one that I'll show you at the end)

I strongly recommend you to learn the articles along with each new noun that you learn. So instead of remembering "Mann = man" simply learn "der Mann = the man". That's basically no additional work, and as you make progress, you'll automatically get a feel for the right grammatical gender.

Articles are a common source of mistakes but they seldom lead to confusion. So, even if you always mix them up, it will seldom cause misunderstandings. But it would be really kind if you still tried to do it right! ;)
Oh, and I have one little surprise for you. Actually there is one way to know which definite article to use. When using the plural of a noun, the definite article "die" is always the right one. There are no exceptions here.

Pro tip:
There is one rule that can actually help you.

In compound words, the last "part" always determines the gender of the word.
(let me know if you know any exceptions but I personally can think of none)

German is full of compound words - words that are a combination of two or more other words. English on the contrary is far more likely to separate the words from each other. So while in English you say "swarm of bees", in German you it's Bienenschwarm. Bienen means bees and Schwarm means swarm - it's that simple.

So you don't need to remember the gender of every single compound word. In the Bienenschwarm-example you only need to remember the gender of "Schwarm" (which is masculine (der Schwarm)). The word Bienenschwarmbeispiel (swarm of bees example) is feminine (das Bienenschwarmbeispiel), because the word "Beispiel" (example) is female.

Got it? If not, the comment section is the right place to go!

Recommended: indefinite articles