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Although this short story contains quite a number of impressive German nouns and adjectives, with the aid of Vokabeln
4-1 following you should have no trouble reading and understanding it. The passage makes considerable use of the German
genitive case (English possessive case), which you have not yet learned. However, a clue applicable here: translate des as
"of the" or "of" and note there are other der-words that also mean "of the". An adjective
is a
part of speech which can be thought of as a "describing
word"—typically, an adjective modifies a noun. In both English and
German, adjectives come before the noun they describe or modify. In
many other languages (such as French) they usually come after
the noun. Here are some examples of adjectives (underlined) you have already encountered: Because nouns are capitalized in German, it is fairly obvious in these sentences where the adjectives occur: just before the
nouns they modify. Note how the endings on German adjectives can change, depending upon the noun (keinen Käse;
klarem Wetter; gute Sicht)—specifically, the gender and case of the noun they are
modifying. Before explaining the basic rules governing adjective endings, you need to have a better understanding of person,
gender, and case in German nouns—concepts that will be explored in the next few lessons. Finally, realize that the ordinal numbers you learned in Lektion 3 are, in fact, adjectives—subject to the same rules governing word endings for adjectives. This short conversational passage contains more examples of adjectives. As was noted previously when the concept of case was introduced for pronouns (Grammatik 2-2), there are
four cases used in German. Recall that the nominative case in German corresponds to the subjective case in English
and applies to nouns and pronouns used in a sentence as the subject of a verb. Nouns (and pronouns) that are used as objects of
transitive (action) verbs are in the English objective case. If these are direct objects (recipients of the action of a
verb), then these nouns are in the accusative case in German. If indirect objects, then these nouns are in the
dative case in German. Essentially, the English objective case is divided, in German, into an accusative case
used for direct objects and a dative case used for indirect objects. For comparison with English, recall that the singular personal pronouns (nominative case) are "I", "you", and
"he/she/it" (1st, 2nd, and 3rd persons). The objective case, personal pronouns in English are "me", "you", and
"him/her/it"—and are used for both direct and indirect objects of verbs. For example: The German accusative case, personal pronouns (singular) are: mich, dich, ihn/sie/es. The German dative
case, personal pronouns (singular) are: mir, dir, ihm/ihr/ihm. Thus, the above English example sentence
becomes, in German: Because mir is a dative pronoun, there is no need in German to use a modifier as in English, where "to" is used as a
signal of an indirect object. The following table summarizes the German pronouns in three cases for both singular and plural
number: Recall from Gespräch
2-1 the "incomplete" sentence Und Ihnen? ('And you?'). Note that the pronoun agrees in case (here, dative) with the
implied sentence — Und wie geht es Ihnen? The same rule is evident in Gespräch 1-1 (Und dir?). Such
agreement is important to convey the correct meaning. Tables giving the German personal pronouns in all cases can be found in an
appendix: Pronoun Tables. Nouns do not change their form (spelling) relative to case in German; instead, a preceding article indicates case. You have
learned the nominative case definite and indefinite articles (Grammatik 3-3: der, die, das and ein, eine. ein) for each
of the three noun genders. Now we will learn the accusative (used to signal a direct object) and dative (used to
signal an indirect object) articles. First, the definite articles: This table might seem a bit overwhelming (and there is yet one more case in German: the genitive!), but some points to note
can make memorizing much easier. First, as you can see from the table, gender does not really exist for plural nouns. No
matter what the noun gender in its singular number, its plural always has the same set of definite articles: die,
die, den for nominative, accusative, and dative cases. The plural der-words are similar to the feminine
singular der-words, differing only in the dative case. Another point: the dative for both masculine and neuter nouns is
the same: dem. Finally, for feminine, neuter, and plural nouns, there is no change between nominative and accusative
cases. Thus, only for masculine nouns is there a definite article change in the accusative compared with the nominative. The following examples demonstrate the use of the definite article in various parts of speech: The indefinite articles are as follows: Of course, there are no plural indefinite articles in German or English (ein means "a". "an", or "one"). It is
important to see that there is a pattern in the case endings added to ein related to the der-words in the definite
articles table above. For example, the dative definite article for masculine nouns is dem—the indefinite article is formed
by adding -em onto ein to get einem. The dative definite article for feminine nouns is der—the
indefinite is ein plus -er or einer. These ending changes will be covered in greater detail in a future
lesson. You will see that there are a number of words (adjectives, for example) whose form relative changes by addition of these
endings to signal the case of the noun they modify. Finally, we can see a pattern relationship between these "endings" and the
3rd person pronouns as well: We could construct a similar table to compare the definite articles to the 3rd person pronouns. And in that case, we would
also see how the plural definite articles (die, die, den) compare with the third person plural pronouns
(sie, sie, ihnen). You have encountered nearly all of the interrogatives commonly used in German (review Grammatik 1-2): In a question, interrogatives replace the unknown object and establish the class of answer expected. Note that the English construction for some of the questions differs from the German in that the former uses the progressive
form of "do". Translate the following sentences into German: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||