Need-to-Know English Grammar for Successful German Learning [Parts of Speech]

I learned more about English grammar in my German classes than I ever learned in any of my English classes.

The reason for this wasn’t because I only ever had horrible English teachers (quite the contrary! I still remember the preposition song set to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” my 6th grade Language Arts teacher made us learn that has served me well); the reason is because I was raised in an English-speaking society/household. Being immersed in the language and observing others around me since birth taught me that, “The dog brown I yesterday walked” wasn’t normal English sentence structure, and that the better answer would be, “I walked the brown dog yesterday.” I didn’t need to know any more about the rules of English grammar than what was accepted as understandable and ‘normal-sounding’ by my peers and what wasn’t. Listening to and reproducing grammatically correct sentences was way more efficient than spending my English classes mapping out sentence structures and understanding the linguistic reasons behind why “The dog brown I yesterday walked” is wrong. I already knew that it sounded wrong, so I wan’t going to say it; my school recognized that and instead spent the time I could have been mapping out sentence structures teaching me more vocabulary and poetic forms. For practicality’s sake, they made the right choice.  It wasn’t until I began learning German that I needed to give thought to how languages worked, piece by piece.

When I began learning German, with all of its “strange” grammar rules, my only frame of reference was English grammar– of which I didn’t understand the mechanics. Because I didn’t learn those grammar rules in English class, I had to learn them in my German class so I could decipher how German grammar functions.

There is at least one book out on the market that recognized this conundrum and tried to fill the void. I have never read it, so I can’t attest to whether or not it is worth your money– but I assure you the problem it is attempting to solve is real. That being said, I’m not trying to plug the entire gaping hole that is the void of English grammar comprehension. I’m instead going to explain the very basics you will need to know in order to get through my other posts without having a dictionary of grammatical terms pulled up in an adjacent window. Additionally, when relevant, my posts on each specific subject matter will go more in depth with additional grammar terms. For now, we’re just going to brush up on some vocabulary. Parts of speech in parentheses are classes of words that aren’t technically one of the 8 official parts of speech, but are necessary to understand other parts of speech, or are very closely related to one of the 8 official parts of speech. I have listed and explained them for your benefit.

One last thing before we get started! There is a magnificent resource for learning Grammar functions called “Schoolhouse Rock!” A group of people decided to use the catchiness of music and lyrics to educate students and help them better remember tricky subject matters. There is a whole section called “Grammar Rock!” For the parts of speech that have a “Grammar Rock!” song available, I have listed a youtube.com link under “Additional Resources.”

Parts of Speech

• NOUN –
  • What is it? a word for a person, place or thing.
  • Examples: doctor, post office, dog.
  • Why do we care?  These are vital for German because all nouns are capitalized. Additionally, each noun in German has an assigned gender.
  • Additional Resources: A Noun Is A Person, Place Or Thing
• (PROPER NOUN) – 
  • What is it?  a noun representing unique entities.
  • Examples: Germany, Main street, the President
  • Why do we care? These become irrelevant in German as all nouns are capitalized.
• PRONOUN – 
  • What is it? a word that substitutes for a noun or noun-phrase
  • Examples: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, them.
  • Why do we care? These become vital for German verb conjugation.
  • Additional Resources: Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla
• (REFLEXIVE PRONOUN) – 
  • What is it? a pronoun serves to show that the sentence’s subject also receives the action of the verb as the object.
  • Examples: myself, me, yourself, himself, herself, itself, yourselves, themselves.
  • Why do we care? There are many German verbs that require reflexive pronouns. Determining accusative or dative case is vital only for the correct reflexive conjugation of “I” and informal “you,” but each regular pronoun changes in reflexive situations.
  • Additional Resources: Reflexive pronouns explained by a different author.
• (RELATIVE PRONOUN) – 
  • What is it? words that relate groups of words to nouns or other pronouns and begin relative clauses (which I discuss in this other post).
  • Examples: that, who, whoever, whom, whomever, which, whichever, whose and of which .
  • Why do we care? These words require declension based on their case in the sentence as nominative, accusative, dative or genitive and gender.
  • Additional Resources: Relative pronouns explained by a different author.
• (INDEFINITE PRONOUN) – 
  • What is it? words that relate groups of words to nouns or other pronouns and begin relative clauses (which I discuss in this other post).
  • Examples: everybody, anybody, somebody, all, each, every, some, none, one. There are also other indefinite pronouns that double as determiners: enough, few, fewer, less, little, many, much, several, more, most, all, both, every, each, any, either, neither, none, some.
  • Why do we care? These words require declension based on their case in the sentence as nominative, accusative, dative or genitive and gender.
  • Additional Resources: Relative pronouns explained by a different author. Or another author still, with an extensive list of indefinite pronouns and their grammatical behavior in German.
• (DETERMINER) –
  • What is it? a word that indicates whether the noun is referring to a definite or indefinite object/element of a larger class.
  • Examples: There are four different classes of determiners:
    • articles = the/a/an
    • demonstratives = this/that
    • possessive = my/their; and
    • quantifiers = many/few/several.
  • Why do we care? These are much more complicated in German than in English, which I explain in detail in a different post. The determiner is fully dependent on the gender of the noun it is connected to, as well as that noun’s case– and this relationship determines the German word used for the determiner.
• ADJECTIVE – 
  • What is it? a word used to describe a noun or a noun-phrase.
  • Examples: big, fluffy, orange, round, recent.
  • Why do we care? These take on endings based on the gender of the noun it is connected to, as well as that noun’s case. Additionally, when you start introducing comparative/superlative adjectives to your sentences, the German word for your adjective may change.
  • Additional Resources: Unpack your Adjectives
• VERB – 
  • What is it? a word used to denote action, occurrence or a state of being.
  • Examples: bring, become, exist.
  • Why do we care? Most of German’s sentence structure is dependent on verbs. Each verb has a conjugation table that is navigated using its actor’s respective pronoun. There are also various tenses which can dramatically change the verb. These tenses are discussed in the second portion of this other post.
  • Additional Resources: Verb: That’s What’s Happenin’
• (AUXILIARY VERB) – 
  • What is it? also known as a “helping verb,” these are verbs that add functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it appears. They can denote tense or modality.
  • Examples: She is going home. That would be fun.
  • Why do we care? German tense is highly dependent on these verbs, and their placement in the sentence is crucial to sentence structure.
• ADVERB – 
• • What is it? a word that further describes a verb, adjective, adverbs, clauses or sentences. I can denote the manner, place, time, frequency, certainty or circumstances of the verb action.
  • Examples: quickly, quietly, recently, soon, together.
  • Why do we care? Be thankful for adverbs, because they are one of the few parts of speech that don’t rely on the noun’s gender and role in the sentence! They do play a part in sentence structure, seeing as they can describe the time or manner of action, and German sentences try to specify time, then manner, then the place of action. The only time adverbs get crazy is when you start with comparative/superlative forms of the adverbs, as the German word for your adverb may change.
  • Additional Resources: Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here
• (PARTICIPLE) –
  • What is it? a verb used as modifier for a noun, noun phrase, verb or verb phrase. There are two kinds, present and past. Present participles usually end in “-ing.” Past participles usually end in “-ed.”
  • Examples: The beaming mother clapped, astounded by her son’s obvious talent.
  • Why do we care? In German specifically, prepositions hold a lot of power over the noun case (which affects determiners and other parts of speech endings). Some German prepositions are always accusative, some are always dative, some are always genitive and some switch betwee

  participles (including present and past) http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/particterm.htm

• (COMPARATIVE) – 
  • What is it? a word that quantifies the degree of the adjective or adverb, in comparison to another entity or group of entities.
  • Examples: bigger, more recent, less common.
  • Why do we care? Just like in English, an ended is added to the adjective or adverb, and sometimes there are specific prepositions involved.
• (SUPERLATIVE) – 
  • What is it? a word that quantifies the extreme embodiment of the base adjective or adverb.
  • Examples: biggest, most recent, least common.
  • Why do we care? Just like in English, an ended is added to the adjective or adverb, and sometimes there are specific prepositions involved.
• PREPOSITION – 
  • What is it? a word that expresses spatial or temporal relations. Usually relates nouns, adjectives or verbs.
  • Examples: above, through, in, before
  • Why do we care? These words are tricky in German (and every other foreign language) because they are not always directly translatable between English and German, Example: (English) I live with my aunt. (German) I live by my aunt. You will have to learn which ones to use when as you go. Additionally, in German specifically, prepositions hold a lot of power over the noun case (which we know affects determiners and adjective endings). Some German prepositions are always accusative, some are always dative, some are always genitive and some switch between accusative and dative based on the relation they describe. In my preposition post I list the accusative, dative, genitive and two-way prepositions for you.
  • Additional Resources: Busy Prepositions
• CONJUNCTION – 
  • What is it? a word that connects words, phrases or clauses.
  • Examples: There are three types
    • coordinating = and/but/for/nor/or/so/yet
    • correlative = either…or/not only… but (also)/neither… nor/both… and/whether… or/just as… so
    • subordinating = after/although/as/as far as/as if/because/before/even if/even though/if/ in order that/ since/so/so that/than/though/unless/until/when/whenever/where/whereas/wherever/while.
  • Why do we care? These words can have major roles in determining German sentence structure. German also has specific correlative pairs you will need to learn.
  • Additional Resources: Conjunction Junction
• INTERJECTION/EXCLAMATION – 
  • What is it? a word or phrase used to express emotion, followed by an exclamation mark. They are also words that interrupt the sentence at hand (such as filled pauses).
  • Examples: Yes! Oops! Ouch! Shh! um, yeah, uh.
  • Why do we care? German has its own words for these common interjections. They are functionally the same at their English counterparts.
  • Additional Resources: Interjections!
• (ONOMATOPOEIA) – 
  • What is it?  a word that phonetically imitates, resembles or suggests the source of the sound that it describes. Think animal noises.
  • Examples: oink, meow, squeak, boom, bang.
  • Why do we care? German, like most languages, has its own onomatopoeia words. They are functionally the same at their English counterparts.
• (AFFIX) – 
  • What is it? a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. The same affix generally has the same effect on the word stems it is attached to.
  • Examples: There are 11 different types of affix, but the two most common types are the:
    • Prefix = an affix placed at the beginning of a word to form a new word. Ex: asymmetric. atypical. atheist. “a-” = not; misbehave. misrepresent. misspell.  “mis-” = bad/wrong. An extensive list of other English prefixes can be found here.
    • Suffix = an affix placed at the end of a word to form a new word. Ex:  biology. endocrinology. criminology. “-ology” = the study of; beautiful, wonderful, colorful. “-ful” = having the possession of the quality of that noun.
  • Why do we care? German has its own affixes and associated meanings. Affixes as a whole serve the same function as English affixes, but the ones used may not map directly to the German vocabulary. Ex: “beautiful” in English is an adaptation of the word “beauty”, with the suffix added, but the German word for “beautiful,” “schön” has no suffix attached, where as the word for beauty, “Schönheit” does have a suffix added. German suffixes in particular can have a direct connection with the gender of the noun. Ex: “-chen,” meaning “little” is always neuter.
• (PARTICLE) –
  • What is it? A particle is a word that does not fit into the conventional grammar categories. They perform definite grammatical functions, but lack definite lexical meaning.
  • Examples: The storm tore up my yard. She passed on the family heirloom to her grandchild. 
    
  • Why do we care? German uses particles as flavor words– they impart attitude, opinion or emphasis. Commonly used ones include: ja, halt, aber, denn, schon, and the imfamous “doch.” The more you hear these words used properly, the clearer their meaning and usage will become. Like in English, man particles are also re-purposed prepositions. Wikipedia explains:
    

    Aber, for example, is also the conjunction but. In Er ist Amerikaner, aber er spricht gut Deutsch, “He is American, but he speaks good German,” aber is a conjunction connecting two sentences. But in Er spricht aber gut Deutsch!, the aber  is a particle, with the sentence perhaps best translated as “What good German he speaks!”

So, there you have it! These are the building blocks for your future German sentences! The way that they relate to one another/interact with each other is the grammar. Think of it as a soccer game (because Germans LOVE soccer): The parts of speech are the players on the field, and you are the referee that has to determine the manners in which they can play with one another. Goalies are allowed to use their hands, but other players aren’t. There are special cases for each part of speech as well. If they break any of the rules of conduct, you blow the whistle and throw a flag. We’ll talk about these rules in detail in the coming posts. Hopefully they will help you with your grammar-learning… GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry. That pun was BEGGING to be played. I understand if you wish to bench me for that one. I hope you will continue reading despite my awful humor. : )

 

Pronunciation & Translation – Sounding it Out & Breaking it Down

Well, if you’re just starting to learn German, it’s best to start at the beginning.

 

SOUNDING IT OUT

As far as pronunciation goes, German and English are actually pretty similar– they are both Germanic languages after all. But there are a few differences. For starters, German is a LOT more phonetic than English; what you see is what you say! Unless words are borrowed from other languages (and sometimes not even then), you will never see a ‘silent’ letter in German (take that French learners)!

The first difference you might notice in picking up anything written in German is the addition of a few letters. Really quick, I want to tell you the names of the “little dots on top” of the vowels and the “squiggily B with a tail”.

The dots are an accent mark called the umlaut. And unfortunately they aren’t just there to make your “u” look like a smiley face (or make the “o” look like it’s screaming in terror”). They are there to denote a different vocalization/pronunciation of the vowel. But, using the face visual is actually kind of helpful because, as you’ll see in the chart, they require you to move your lips differently than the regular, un-umlauted vowel.

The letter that looks like a “squiggily B with a tail” is a letter from the Greek alphabet that the Germans use to make a double “s” noise. In German, it is called the Eszett.

The biggest differences between English and German pronunciation are those listed in my chart below. I have provided you with a short example word that showcases the pronunciation. When I was learning, I found it most helpful to remember a specific, common, word with the different letters in it for reference. This will help your pronunciation by giving you something to try and simulate/recreate on your own. I had issues with the “ä” noise in particular. Whenever I found a new word with an ä in it, I would quietly say my example word, “Mädchen”, to myself before reading the new word aloud.

 

If you are learning German outside of a classroom and you aren’t sure that you are pronouncing a word correctly, the websites www.dict.cc or www.translate.google.de have audio clips for a good number of words. Take a few good listens to the word, and then try to repeat it yourself.

Before you start reading the rest of this post, I want to tell you not to panic! The 11 pronunciation rules above apply in most situations and should get you through most of the strange new words you will encounter in the German dictionary. However, just like in every language, there are exceptions, some of which I will briefly describe below.

• Combinations of multiple letters sometimes produce a different sound. For example, “-tion” is pronounced “tee-O-n”. (A good key word for this is “Nation”).
• Specific combinations of consonant compounds and vowels will play into how the consonant compounds are pronounced.
  • This website has a more specific guide for some of those instances. It breaks down the relationships between the consonants and surrounding vowels that determine the changes.
• Sometimes the part of Germany you are in (or where your German teacher came from/studied in) will affect your pronunciation in the form of a dialect. My first German teacher, who taught me 4 years of German, studied in Freiburg. Because she was versed in the southern, Freiburg-ian, German, that is the dialect/accent that I most closely mirror… and when I studied German in the northern city of Hamburg, people often asked me where I/my German was from. I was usually understood, but sometimes asked to repeat myself for clarity.
  • A good example of this is in the adjective ending “-ig”. In southern German, “-ig” is pronounced “-ish”. In northern German, “-ig” is pronounced “-ig”.
  • The word “ich” (meaning “I”) also changes drastically. In southern German it is pronounced “ish”  while the northern Germans will say “ick”.
• German also borrows a lot of words from other languages, which sometimes determines what the reader has to do with pronunciation rules. For example:
  • The word for Jeans in German is “die Jeans”, borrowed from English. So instead of following the “j” = “yuh” rule and saying “dee Yeens”, the correct pronunciation is “dee jeens”, just like English.
  • The German word for the color/fruit orange is borrowed from French. The word (noun) is “die Orange”. Instead of following the German rules and saying “dee oR-ang-uh”, with “-e” = “-ah”, it is pronounced more like “dee oR-an-zjuh” (sorry, my French transliteration is probably horrible).
  • The best way to work around these oddities is to learn them, make some strange memory association between the word and the language it is borrowed from, and repeat the word out loud a lot. I always pictures the jeans in question to be Levi’s– which I associate with American (English-speaking) cowboys. For the word “orange”, I think about how orange is an obnoxious color, and that I find the French language (specifically its spelling –>pronunciation) to be obnoxious. Like I said, find whatever association works for you, no matter how weird, and run with it!

Practice and exposure to audio/visual resources will be your greatest aids! Especially when you’re trying to differentiate the pronunciation between words like “Kirche” and “Kirsche” (“Church” and “Cherry”). And context will be your greatest rescuer in conversation, should you make an error. Lucky for you, most Germans are just tickled when you try to speak German instead of demanding to be catered to in English. In almost every instance, German people I encountered in Germany were understanding and willing to try and explain my faults so I could fix them.

BREAKING IT DOWN

Another large portion of German pronunciation comes with learning how Germans “build” words. You’ve probably heard of German words that are longer than the English alphabet. My favorite long word that might come up in a ‘normal’ conversation is “Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung” which has 26 letters and means “speed limit”. I like to think of long German words as an ornate Lego castle, built out of blocks of common words. The Germans like to create very specific, complicated words out of many less specific, less complicated words stacked on top of each other– which is GOOD for new language learners because the big words are usually made out of words you’ll already know how to say. The trick is learning to recognize these familiar words within the compound word. Additionally, although you may not know the perfect translation of a new monster word, if you can translate the smaller pieces it is built out of, you can get a general understanding of the topic at hand.

Let’s take my favorite long word, “Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung”

We can sound it out using the chart I gave you above.

gah-sch-vind-ish-kItes-bah-gren-tsung… (or if you’re a northern German speaker, gah-sch-vind-ig-kItes-bah-gren-tsung)

We can also do a lot of damage in understanding how it means “speed limit”.

Let’s break it into some smaller parts: Geschwind~ig~keit~s~be~grenz~ung.

• geschwind = fast
• “-ig” = a word chunk that can turn a noun into an adjective, or a verb stem into an adjective, or transform a noun in front of another noun into an adjective that describes the second noun, (which comes into effect after the next part) (explanation)
• “-keit” = turns an adjective into a noun. It is used like the suffix “-ness” in English. (explanation)
• “-s” = Genitive ending denoting ownership
• “be-” = a prefix that “inflicts” something on a subject (explanation)
• grenz = boundary
• “-ung” = a suffix that changes a verb into a noun. (explanation)

So, if we mush all of that together, we get something along the lines of “fastness of the inflicted boundary” or “limit inflicted on the speediness”.

Even if you only recognize and understand the nouns, “Geschwind” and “Grenze”, which mean “fast” and “boundary”, you will probably be able to understand the definition of the word in context.

Please don’t get held up in all of the grammar-craziness of the prefixes and suffixes and genitive possession that I gave explanation links for. I mostly gave the explanation links to prove that I’m not just making this up. Again, learning a few words with the key prefixes or suffixes and what those word mean will greatly help your understanding of the prefixes and suffixes. Those key words don’t have to be 26 letters long, but they will help in tearing apart the new vocab words that are 26 letters long.

Please don’t get held up by not knowing where all of the breaks should go. The more words you add to your vocabulary (prefixes and suffixes included), the easier it will be to find the “natural” breaks in the big words. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten scared by a big word, gave up on finding the natural breaks, looked up the definition of the word in a dictionary, and then, all of a sudden, all of the natural breaks seemed to pop out of the page in glaring neon letters. That’s called learning. We will know how to break that word apart the next time we see it.

The longest German word approved by the Duden (the official German dictionary) is still up in the air, because in order for it to be “official” the word has to be in common use, but this news article tells the tale of what used to be German’s longest word at an awe-inspiring 63 letters: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.

The same article also explains how German words (specifically nouns) can get really out of hand:

A ballpoint pen that belongs to a captain could be called a Kapitänskugelschreiber.

If the pen happens to belong to a captain of the Danube Steamship Company, it’s a Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskugelschreiber.

Let us now refer to the ink used in that pen. This is the Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskugelschreibertinte.

And, please bear with us, there could theoretically be a shop specializing in such ink. In that case we have a: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskugelschreibertintenfachgeschäft.

That store would presumably have a manager, the: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskugelschreibertintenfachgeschäftsführer.

That’s 81 letters. And we could go on. But for a word to be officially recognized, it must be in genuine use and must have been referred to in published texts.

Apparently German legalese can put English legalese to shame. Check out this 67 letter word:

Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung

Again, this word can be cut down into bite-sized pieces, as this website shows:

Grundstück: plot of land
Verkehr: traffic
Genehmigung: approval
Zuständigkeit: responsibility
Übertragung: transmission
Verordnung: regulation

It just goes to show that gargantuan German words CAN be tamed, pronounced, and understood, if you’re willing to crack the whip and bolster your vocabulary and your ability to identify said vocabulary buried within a bed of other vocabulary/prefixes/suffixes.

What is your favorite long German word that you’ve mastered?