Hello everyone,
it’s Christmas time. Hooray. Or Boohray… depends on whether you like it or not :).
But for us it’ll be business as usual, I guess. Today we’ll talk about the word Weihnachten a bit. Weihnachten is a nice sounding word and I have to say that I like it much better than Christmas. Not to mention the awful X-mas… like it’s an energy drink or something.
- X-mas™ – keeps you up the wholy night*
(*contains Caffeine)
It has Nacht in it and it starts with Weih which comes from the verb weihen which means to… and I am already bored :). Seriously…. we’ll take a break form learning today. Weihnachten means Christmas and Christmas means a lot of different things to people around the world… like eating, going to church, seeing the family, arguing with the family, going for a walk in the snow, deep and agonizing depression, loneliness, working, singing Christmas chorals, ginger bread, nothing, 3 days off and last but not least Weihnachten means presents. And so I decided to give you one too to thank you all for all your comments and questions and feedback.
It is a chart about the German cases… and it is… well.. a little different than the usual charts. Here it is…
I’m sure you’ll be like … “what the hell is that?” so I’ll add a little explanation here and you can of course ask all your questions. It is by no means complete. It is more an overview about the most important aspects and I tried to fit in the basics that you need every day without cluttering a page with tables… honestly… I hate tables.
Anyway… if it doesn’t work for you that’s totally fine. I just had it sitting on my computer and I thought I might as well put it out there :).
So…. I wish you all a wonderful Christmas holiday with lots of love and joy and peace or whatever else you wish for. Oh and for those of you you don’t celebrate Weihnachten at all… well… have a wonderful normal day or a normal day with all stores closed :).
So again… fröhliche Weihnachten euch allen!
And here’s my favorite Christmas song…
Explanations for the chart
The numbers: stand for the cases. 1 is Nominative, 3 is Dative and 4 is Accusative. 2 would be Genitive but it is missing. The numbers are like that because this is the German order of cases and I used that back when I made this chart a few years ago. Students learn the order Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive and it makes sense to do it that way. So maybe I’ll rework the page at some point but I hope you can make sense of it anyway … it’s just stupid numbers after all.
The boxes in the center: are ordered by gender – male, female, neuter and plural and inside of them you find the definite article (the), the indefinite article (a) and the personal pronoun (he/she/it) in all 3 cases. The small, italic endings that you can see here and there give you the indefinite article.
- Ist das ein Mann?
Ja, das ist einer.
The little drawer on the bottom with the weird circle symbol and sich is the reflexive pronoun. It is the same for all boxes. The small drawer on the left bottom is the stem of the possessive… so the basis for his, her, its and their.
The slider on the bottom of the page: shows the cases of all other personal pronouns like I, you, we and they. The black something is supposed to be a wallet. I wanted it to indicate possession but so far no one was able to identify it :). Anyway… the words with that symbol are the stems for my, your, our and their.
The weird drawing in the middle: is an attempt to visualize the basic pattern of cases that works for maybe 90 % of all verbs. That is, the “use Accusative by default” and the “transfer” idea that is inside of most of the actions that have 2 objects.
On the sides: you will find examples for verbs that only take Accusative (case 4) and only Dative (case 3). Also for those that take 4 and possibly 3. Note that for all those transfer-verbs the Dative is kind of optional and you can make a sentence just fine without it. It’ll be more or less idiomatic depending on the verb.
If you questions, go right ahead and leave me a comment. And if you have thoughts on what works and what doesn’t please share them. It is really more of a work in progress.
I like your ‘weird chart’. Making A graphic organizer like this that combines ALL the many rules German follows is difficult and it’s nice especially to see one from a German mind. A couple things for if you change it to go to how German’s taught in NA:
1. The slider at bottom of page is for I, you (sing), we and you (pl) (sie pl is they, ihr is you (plural) or what my students call the ‘you guys word’ 2. On the sides: the key dative only verbs we first learn in level are danken, gefallen, glauben, helfen, passen, stehen, (wehtun, Leidtun) (having it in alphabetical order can help with the learning). Then we learn scheinen, felhlen and folgen. I see why you left off glauben as it can be followed by either, which is something that isn’t taught till later level, and of course wehtun and Leidtun are idioms, but really think helfen, passen, stehen, should go on your outside somewhere. I love your 4 (+3) list and the graphic for that!! I’m confused by the 4 + 4 thought, these are accusative followed by accusative?? When you do roll this chart out for real examples of each sentence pattern will be useful. Fröhliche Weihnacten!
From what I understand, the 4+4 verbs are ones that take two objects in the accusative. Emanuel has mentioned that such verbs exist, but are very rare.
So I’m guessing that you’d say “Ich frage dich die Frage”.
btw Emanuel, why do you have the 1, 3, 4 boxes slowly falling down above the female box?
And shouldn’t the neuter indefinite pronoun be “eines” rather than “eins”? Or is that the casual way of saying it?
At the moment, it’s adjectives I’m struggling on… it takes me about 5 to 10 seconds to inflect an adjective for gender, case and strength!
Lynn is right … I had them fall down because it is the same stuff for all boxes and I thought I could not show it so Long as I showed that it was there :)… it is supposed to “look” interactive, so you could pull out the boxes with your finger or slide the bottom slider if were touch paper … as for the adjectives… this is one Thing you really Need to come out automatically. It costs so much to deduce the ending conciously and you gain almost nothing. Add an -e to get the rythm right and then just “let the endings happen” :)
In the Genitive it is usually ‘eines’. In Nominative and Accusative it is usually ‘eins’, especially in speech. The same goes for kein(e)s when it is used as pronoun.
If a noun (in the gentivie or dative) follows you’ll find ‘eines’ more often, particularly in ‘Hochdeutsch’. When I speak my dialekt I never use ‘eines’ or ‘keines’. I only do so in ‘Hochdeutsch’ and even then it does sound a bit stilted.
Thanks a lot for the Feedback … especially for the Dative verbs. This is really helpful to know and I’ll add those… as for the 4+4… I guess I should have written 4+(4) and the other comment is right… it is a double accusative
Ich frage ihn das.
There are only 3 or 4 verbs that works that way but one of them is “fragen” which is so super common that it makes people think it would be a rule… but it is just a big big exception. And yes, I was thinking adding a second page with examples so you have a pretty one to look at and a reference one for the “grind” :)… oh and I’ll definitely add an indication of the endings for the mein, sein, unser and so on… then it is really quite complete :)
Ich möchte auch was teilen. Als ich begonnen habe, die Adjektivdeklination zu lernen, war ich total verwirrt, weil es so viele Varianten zu geben schien. Und in allen Lehrbüchern gab es immer jene drei nicht wirklich nachvollziehbaren Tabellen mit Endungen, die unmöglich sind, auswendig zu lernen.
Ich habe die aber gelernt, indem ich meine eigene Tabelle erstellt habe, in welcher sowohl alle Endungen, als auch die meisten Pronomen dargestellt sind, und zwar auf solche Weise, dass es einfacher wäre, die Beziehungen zwischen den Kasus (bzw. Fällen) und den Endungen zu beobachten.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxm1ZNIgnYhnSGZISHg3TVBVSnM/
Ich weiß nicht, ob es geklappt hat, weil die hierdurch entstandene Tabelle manchen Menschen auch zu kompliziert scheinen könnte, aber es geht hier nicht um meine Tabelle an sich (sie zu lesen ist sowieso eine passive, d.h. wenig bringende Aktivität), sondern darum, dass man was Eigenes machen könnte, und genau durch den Vorgang selber würde man vermutlich lernen.
Definitiv. Ich stimme dir voll zu. Ich habe selbst das meiste was ich über Deutsche Grammatik weiß beim Unterrichten gelernt. Ich habe vor 5 Jahren einfach angefangen und immer versucht Regeln und Pattern zu finden. Das hat richtig Spaß gemacht, mehr auf jeden Fall, als das selbe in der Uni oder aus Büchern passive zu lernen. Und als Muttersprachler kann man das ja machen, denn es ist ja alles im Kopf und man braucht nur zu analysieren… aber von meinem ersten Schema für die Fälle bis zu diesem war ein langer Weg. Ein Versuch war so kompliziert, dass ich ihn selber nicht mehr verstehe :)
und selber eine Tabelle oder ein Schema zeichnen… es gibt kaum was besseres, denn daran wird man sich immer erinnern… vorausgesetzt man macht es gerne. Wenn’s einem im Unterricht aufgegeben wird, obwohl man eigentlich keinen Bock drauf hat, dann funktioniert’s natürlich nicht. Ich hab’ auch noch eine Frage zu deinem Schema… wofür ist denn die dritte Zeile bei den einzelnen Fällen? Die in der fast immer “n.a.” steht?
Entspannten letzten Weihnachtsfeiertag dir!
Danke, gleichfalls!
Die letzte Zeile ist für den Nullartikel, der immer einen besonderen Fall darstellt.
Thanks André! I figured she had the 1.3.4 falling down as she didn’t have any down below – making the chart more simple and clean graphically. ‘Eines’ is used for the genitive masculine and neuter, so to say: ‘Das ist eines’ for the neuter indefinite pronoun would be confusing, to say the least. It sounds right to say ‘Das ist eins/meins/etc.’ but I don’t know the rule for that. As far as adjective endings, I found Emanuel’s post on that very useful. I especially liked the idea to just be sure to have ‘e’ or ‘en’ so the meter is correct. :) BTW, what do you mean by ‘and strength’? PS. I didn’t know how to correct my typo error above – Fröhliche Weihnachten!
Totally agree on the “eines vs. eins”… back in th day “eines” was more common but today it sounds quite epic and poetic to use it in accusative…. even if the sentence is constructed in a way that makes it clear that it is an Accusative.
By strength, I thinks André means the weak-strong-mixed stuff that there is about adjectives :)… but honestly… I do not know how that works and I think it should not be used in teaching as it sounds super confusing and complicated. As for the typo … it’ll be there for all eternity … in the company of the thousands that I’ve done myself :)
Ein frohes Weihnachtsfest und alles Gute zum neuen Jahr!!
Danke, dir auch :)
I hope you (Emanuel) and your followers (of the blog) have a very merry Weihnachten, and a happy and prosperous Silvester :-D
Merry Christmas Emmanuel!. Have a great day!.
Awesome chart! I have an addition: maybe “welch-” could be added to the indefinite plural section?
eg. Sind das Äpfel?
Ja, das sind welche.
Also, I like how on the feminine the numbers disappear – the 3 looks like a 2 as well because Genitive and Dative look the same… and the 4 is completely gone because it’s not different to 1! I wonder if that was intentional…. hm?
Nah… that is a nice interpretation but it was not my intention :)… I had them drop just because the labels are the same for all 4 boxes and I wanted to avoid clutter. However, I wanted to communicate that it is always the same and that the viewer can (virtually) pull out the drawers to check what’s written on them.
Good call for the “welche”… that should definitely on there.
Hello Emmanuel, I just wanted to thank you very much for all your efforts and kindness, and wish you and your family a very happy 2014, Lucius
Danke :)… das wünsch’ ich dir auch!
Danke Manuel for the posts all year. However when I saw the tile of this newest post, I was hoping you could expain a simple question for me. What is the difference between Weihnacht und Weihnachten? Why do I see these two words used interchangably? I know they both mean Christmas but why the difference?
Hey man, sorry or the delayed response… I guess it isn’t really that interesting now anymore… at least not for 11 months :). But anyway… I think Weihnacht is basically limited to compounds
Weihnachtsmarkt/mann/tag/ferien/geschenk
and very few fixed expressions like “Weiße Weihnacht”.
“Weihnachten” does not work in compounds at all but it is the word to go for whenever you need the stand alone word
Vor 2 Wochen war Weihnachten.
Ich mag Weihnachten.
An Weihnachten mache ich nix.
Weihnacht would sound wrong in all those… I don’t know why that is though :). By the way, easter is coming and there is a similar dycho-thing there… Oster and Ostern
Ostermontag/marsch/ei
Ostern ist schön.
Hello Emmanuel, I know that you discussed anstellen in a few lines along with haben. Would you consider a complete discussion of anstellen because it is so common? herzlichen Dank, Lucius
It is and it might be one of the craziest words out there because the meanings go in ALL directions… I’ll definitely discuss that :)
BTW: Nancy Thuleen has a very good write up on adjective declination, that includes an excellent graphic. I was able to learn adjective declination within just a couple of days using her information. Here is a link if you are interested: http://www.nthuleen.com/teach/grammar/adjektivendungenexpl.html
Nice write up and I too like your chart, although Tables don’t give me any heartburn. I have, at this time, only received two mailings and I commend you on some excellent work. Vielen Dank! Bill
Yeah, I’ve seen that and it is pretty cool. Obviously I can’t say whether it works for me or not :).
Thanks for the kind feedback.