Prepositions (A, D, G and 2-way)

If you’re new to language learning, you may not know, but prepositions are the jerks of the parts of speech family. They include (but are not limited to) the words for:

above, across, after, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beside, besides, between, but, by, down, during, for, from, in, inside, into, like, near, of, off, on, outside, over, past, save, since, to, through, throughout, under, until, upon, with, within, without.

Each language has different prepositions to go with different phrases. In English, you would say, “I stayed with my Aunt.” or “I stayed at my Aunt’s.” In German, you would say, “Ich war bei meiner Tante”– which literally translates to “I was by my Aunt.” For this reason it is very important to learn the correct prepositional phrases. This website is a nice resource to see exactly how some of the more common prepositions function, and if you scroll to the bottom of the page that this link takes you to, it will show you a list of verbs that have a specific preposition attached.

However, in this post I want to focus on the different effects that German prepositions have on pronouns, nouns (and their adjectives) rather than the specific pairings of verbs and prepositions.

Certain prepositions will always render their pronoun’s or noun’s case (and attached adjectives) accusative, dative or genitive.

Memorizing this chart will give you an easy boost to improving your German grammar, as the accusative and dative prepositions are rather common. The genitive prepositions that I have listed in the first column (“anstatt” through “wegen”) are the ones that I have found to be the most useful in my normal German interactions. Genitive prepositions can usually be avoided altogether by using other phrases to communicate the same meaning, but nothing says that you can’t whip one out and “wow” your native speaker friends with one if the opportunity arises (My favorite is “trotz”).

Our understanding of nominative, accusative and dative tells us that in the sentence:

I bought my daughter the car.

“I’ is nominative, “the car” is accusative, and “my daughter” is dative.

If we add the preposition “for” (“für”) and change the sentence to:

I bought the car for my daughter.

“I” is nominative, “the car” is accusative, and the use of the preposition “for” (“für”) renders the noun “my daughter” accusative instead of dative. No matter what, the noun (or pronoun, and the attached adjectives) after an accusative preposition, they will be accusative. The same goes for dative and genitive prepositions respectively. 

You will notice that there are many other prepositions that I have not listed for you in the chart above. *Most* of these prepositions fall into a fourth category known as 2-way prepositions (I say “most” because I cannot find an exhaustive list of genitive prepositions anywhere!). As the name implies, 2-way prepositions can render the subsequent noun or pronoun’s case (and attached adjective’s cases) either accusative OR dative. So, how to decide? Unfortunately you can’t just pick one and run with it. Knowing which case is appropriate to use depends on the situation your sentence is describing:

• If your sentence’s preposition is detailing information about “where to,” then the accusative case is used. 
• If your sentence’s preposition is detailing information about “where,” then the dative case is used.

I remember these relationships because the phrase “where to” has more letters than “where,” just like “accusative” has more letters than the word “dative.”

Let’s explore an example set of situations:

1. I am getting in the car.
2. I am in the car.

The first sentence is answering the question “where to” by telling where I am going: into the car. The second sentence is answering the question “where” by telling you where I am. So the German equivalents would look like:

1. Ich gehe in das Auto –or– Ich gehe ins Auto.
2. Ich bin in dem Auto.

Another way teachers may tell you to interpret the correct case is by considering if there is motion or no motion involved. In the first car example, I am “getting in(to)” the vehicle, whereas in the second car example I am already “in” the vehicle. Just don’t let this fool you. If we had a sentence like,

“The children are playing soccer on the street,”

there appears to be motion (playing), however the prepositional phrase isn’t really connected to this motion. The prepositional phrase is acting as additional information about the motion and isn’t part of the motion itself (It is answering the question “where” rather than the question “where to”).

I have also devised my own method for discerning the proper case. I will visualize a cameraman filming my sentence: if to capture the essence of my sentence he’d be filming a close up of me (or who or whatever) doing something, chances are it’s the accusative case; if to capture the essence of my sentence he’d have to set up a whole scene (a “where”), chances are it’s the dative case. It’s not foolproof, but it helps me when I get stuck on sentences like, “The children are playing soccer on the street.”

Why be so difficult? It helps to clarify what’s going on using grammar instead of extra vocabulary. I’ll blame it on the stereotypical German need for efficiency at all times, including in their language.

A few good examples of this “efficiency” are:

1. Ich skilaufe auf den Berg.
   1. I am skiing (to where?) down the mountain.
2. Ich skilaufe auf dem Berg.
   1. I am skiing (where?) on/at the mountain.

1. Ich gehe in den Laden.
   1. I walk (to where?) into the store (from the parking lot).
2. Ich gehe in dem Laden.
   1. I walk (where) in the store (browsing the aisles).

The entire meaning of the sentence changes with just 1 letter.

The last monkey wrench I’ll throw at you is the set of instances wherein the prepositional phrases don’t serve a “where” or “where to” purpose. One such phrase is, “thinking about.” In German, the verb “denken” which means “to think” can be followed by the prepositions “an” or “über.” These words are followed by the accusative when they are used to mean “about.” 

If we were to say, “denken an” followed with dative, it would be understood to mean “thinking atop” (and “denken über” followed with dative would be understood to mean “thinking above”). This difference would be very important if you were trying to tell someone “Ich denke an dich” (accusative, meaning “I think about you”) versus “Ich denke an dir” (dative, meaning “I think on top of you”), because that could get really awkward, really quickly!

However, not all prepositions that translate to “about” from German to English are followed by the accusative case; it is only true with 2-way prepositions! The phrase “dream about” in German is “traumen von,” and as we learned from the chart at the beginning, “von” is ALWAYS dative. Even if it means “about.”

There you have it! Good luck!

Articles (Definite and Indefinite)

In English there are only two articles: “the” and “a”. You could bump it up to three if you wanted to to include the word “an,” which is used in the same way as the word “a” in instances when the noun starts with a vowel or a vowel sound. These are words that sometimes precede a noun to describe the “definiteness” of the noun– do you want a specific pencil, or will any pencil suffice? In German, there’s a little more to determining which article to use than just whether or not the noun starts with a vowel.

Let’s get started!

_____________________________________

Definite Articles

The most common word in the English language is the word “the.” It is used to refer to a specific noun/object, so grammarians call this this word type the “definite article.” It’s the difference between asking for any old pencil and asking for the pencil.

German has 6 different words to convey the same idea as the English word “the”: der, die, das, den, dem, des. These are known as “der words.”

According to this list, “der” is the most common German word, with “die” taking second place and “das” coming in at seventh place. Knowing this, it is important to know and understand these words and how they are used!

In German, every noun has a gender, be it masculine, feminine or neuter. There is a little bit of logic and reasoning behind the gender allocations, but most of them have to do with phonetics more than with traditional gender rolls and associations (For example, the word for “skirt” is masculine and the word for “necktie” is feminine). And to make matters even more complicated, pluralized nouns also have their own gender category for determining the proper article to choose.

Germans also take note of the roll of the noun in their sentences and whether each noun is the subject, object, indirect object or possessed object– which are also known as being in the nominative, accusative, dative or genitive case respectively.

By taking these two pieces of information about each noun, you can utilize this chart to determine the correct definite article for your noun:

First, determine which column your noun’s gender dictates, and then determine the row that the noun’s case falls under. The intersection of this column and row houses your desired definite article.

I have color-coded this chart to showcase the patterns within the chart visually.

Now, for a bit of practice! Here is a pre-selected set of nouns, grouped according to gender:

We will place them in one of these pre-formulated sentences, which translates to “The _______ ate the _______ from the _______.”

1. Singular subject:
   • (Definite article) (Subject noun) isst (Definite article) (Object noun) von (Definite article) (Indirect object noun).
2. Plural subject:
   • (Definite article) (Subject noun) essen (Definite article) (Object noun) von (Definite article) (Indirect object noun).

So, if we used all masculine nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Der Löwe isst den Apfel von dem Besucher.

If we used all feminine nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Die Katze isst die Kiwi von der Nonne.

If we used all neuter nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Das Pferd isst das Fisch von dem Kind.

If we used all plural nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Die Bären essen die Karotten von den Zoowärter.

However, sentences will rarely be comprised of exclusively same-gendered nouns… “Die Katze isst das Fisch von der Nonne” and “Das Pferd isst den Apfel von dem Besucher” make more sense than my previous sentences. So, the quicker you get used to memorizing the forms and combining them, the quicker your German grammar will become envy-worthy!

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about the genitive case! It’s just harder to incorporate into a simple sentence alongside all of the other cases, but now that you understand the 3 more common cases, we can build on what we know! Genitive case is used to express possession, much like the “-‘s” in English. If we were to translate a sentence that includes a genitive case, the genitive part usually comes out sounding like “the bicycle of the man” or “the dog of my mother”.

This time our example sentence will read: “The _______ ate the _______ of the _______.”

So, if we used all masculine nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Der Löwe isst den Apfel des Besuchers. (*notice the “s” added to the end of the owner of the object.)

If we used all feminine nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Die Katze isst die Kiwi der Nonne.

If we used all neuter nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Das Pferd isst das Fisch des Kinds. (*notice the “s” added to the end of the owner of the object.)

If we used all plural nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Die Bären essen die Karotten der Zoowärter.

 

Congratulations! You have mastered the first half of articles!

_____________________________________

Indefinite Articles

The word “a” or “an” is the 5th most common word in the English language, and its 6 German counterparts (ein, eine, einen, einem, einer, eines) rank as the 14th most common word in German.

Unlike the definite articles, these words refer to a NON-specific noun/object, so grammarians call this this word type the “indefinite article.” Now we are asking for any old pencil, instead of a specific pencil.

Just as before, we combine the gender of the noun and the noun’s case in the sentence to navigate to the correct “ein word.”

Again, I have color-coded this chart to showcase the patterns within the chart visually. This chart displays just the ending of the “ein word,” so orange squares are “einen“, red squares are “einer” and green squares are simply “ein.”

We will use the same example words as before to explore the indefinite articles and their changes but this time the sentence will translate to: “A _______ ate a _______ from a _______.”

If we used all masculine nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Ein Löwe isst einen Apfel von einem Besucher.

If we used all feminine nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Eine Katze isst eine Kiwi von einer Nonne.

If we used all neuter nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Ein Pferd isst ein Fisch von einem Kind.

Now we reach an interesting situation– we can not assign plural nouns an indefinite article (think “a bears” “a carrots” or “a zookeepers”), so I must teach you another “ein word” that is not actually an article: kein. “Kein” means “no,” in the sense of “not a one of the” or “none of the.”

If we used all plural nouns and the “ein word” “kein”, the sentence would read like this:

• Keine Bären essen keine Karotten von keinen Zoowärter.

This particular example sentence doesn’t make much sense, as there are too many negatives, so here are some other examples.

• Keine Bären essen Karotten von Zoowärter. (No bears eat carrots from zoo keepers.)
• Bären essen keine Karotten von Zoowärter. (Bears eat no carrots from zoo keepers.)
• Die Bären essen Karotten von keinen Zoowärter. (The bears eat carrots from none of the/no zoo keepers.)

Then, if we venture back into genitive, our example sentence will read: “A _______ ate a _______ of a _______.”

So, if we used all masculine nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Ein Löwe isst einen Apfel eines Besuchers. (*notice the “s” added to the end of the owner of the object.)

If we used all feminine nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Eine Katze isst eine Kiwi einer Nonne.

If we used all neuter nouns, the sentence would read like this:

• Ein Pferd isst ein Fisch eines Kinds. (*notice the “s” added to the end of the owner of the object.)

If we used all plural nouns and the “ein word” “kein”, the sentence would read like this:

• Keine Bären essen keine Karotten keiner Zoowärter.

And with that, you have mastered the second half of articles!

_____________________________________

The moral of the story is that it is EXCRUCIATINGLY VITAL to learn, memorize and practice these two charts:

If you don’t get them right all the time, Germans will likely still understand you– but the longer you resist learning them, the longer you resist an “easy fix” to substantially improving your German language skills.