German Adjective Endings – 2 Easy Steps

Hello everyone,

Welcome to  my ultimate guide on one of everyone’s most favorite grammar topics:

German Adjective Endings 

The way this is usually taught is with tables.
But not here!

Because as Yoda used to say:

“Tables – bore me they do, easy to apply they are not.”

We will learn to use adjective endings without ANY tables and charts.
And by “use” I mean score 75% and above in tests AND use proper adjective endings in conversation without having to think too much.
Yes, it’s possible!

Today, I’ll tell you all about it, so if you’re ready, let’s jump right in.

And we’ll start with a quick sort of overview of adjective endings in general. If you’d rather get to the system right away, just skip this section.

Adjective Endings in German – Overview

What are adjective endings

Adjective endings are quite common and many European languages have them. Spanish, Italian and French have them, Slavic languages have them. And even Old English had them. But English wasn’t a fan of endings in general and most of them got washed away centuries ago, by the stormy winds of the Atlantic. Or just by laziness.

When you look up an adjective in a dictionary, you’ll get the basic form.

• cold – kalt

And that’s also what you’ll use when you say something like “XYZ is [adjective].

• Das Bier ist kalt.
• The beer is cold.

However, when they’re in an actual sentence in front of a noun, they get an ending.

• Ich will ein kaltes Bier.
• I want a cold beer.

• Ich will einen heißen Kaffee.
• I want a hot coffee.

People can understand you, if you use a wrong ending or miss them entirely, but it’s one of those very obvious mistakes.
Many English speakers just kind of skip the ending completely out of habit but that REALLY sticks out to native speakers. Not so much because of the grammar, but because of the rhythm. Rhythm is super important in language and that adjective ending, no matter which one, adds an extra syllable, so leaving it out just ruin your rhythm completely.

This is actually the basis for step 1 of my system, so we’ll get back to that soon.

What do Adjective Endings depend on

Adjective endings generally reflect grammatical information about the noun. Specifically the noun gender, the number (singular or plural) and if the language has cases, then also the case.
In order to pick the right ending, you kind of have to know these three pieces of information. That’s already a LOT, but in German there is yet another layer.

Take these two examples:

• Ich kaufe ein kaltes Bier.
• Ich trinke das kalte Bier.

The sentences are almost identical and the object is the same in both of them. It’s neuter (das Bier), singular and Accusative. And yet, we’re using two different endings.
Can you tell what the difference is?

It is the article.

In German, the adjective ending doesn’t only depend on number, case and gender. It also depends on the type of article that comes before it.

And this is where we meet the three different “schemes”.

Weak, strong and mixed declension – Bro, What?

If you’ve tried to learn adjective endings before coming here, you’ve probably come across these terms already. Textbooks and YouTube teachers love throwing them around.
Declension in this context just means as much as “adding an ending” and weak, strong and mixed means… not much.

Basically, there are three “sets” of adjective endings, each for one type of article.

This is why you often find 3 separate adjective ending tables, one for each type.

Here they are.

Now, this whole weak, strong, mixed stuff and the tables are nice as a theoretical way to structure the information.
Though I would argue that my Case Ending Triangle chart is much better (link below).
But they’re AWFUL when it comes to speaking German.
Like… there might be some people with a super visual memory who can recall these tables on the fly.
But for most people, mentally using these tables while speaking is just impossible and even memorizing them just for a test is hard.

That’s why I think using these tables and the weak, strong, mixed declension distinction is NOT the most effective way to learn or teach these.

And like  I promised, I do have a better one, so let’s take a look.

Adjective Endings from first principles

First principles is kind of a buzz word so I wanted to use it in the headline.
But all we’re basically trying to do is see if we can simplify things a bit. Or a lot.

We learned that adjective endings depend on case, gender, number AND also which type of article comes before it.

• 4 cases
• 3 genders
• 2 numbers (singular/plural)
• 3 types of articles (definite, indefinite, none)

If we multiply that, we get 72 different possible endings or three tables with 24 endings each.
That’s what makes it so hard to memorize.

However, if we look at the tables, we can also immediately see that there is a LOT of overlap.

And if we count how many DIFFERENT adjective endings there are, we’ll find that there are actually only 5:

e, en, em, er, es

That’s right, there are only 5 distinct adjective endings. That’s not so bad.
And it gets even better. Much better.

If we count how common each ending is across a HUGE corpus of texts, we’ll find the following stats:

This is crazy, actually.
The ending -en is the most common one and accounts for almost half of all endings. And the ending -e alone is another third.

So together, -en and -e make up around 85% of all adjective endings in actual German.

If we only get those two correct, we’ll pass every test already and generally sound pretty good.
And the best thing is… we can get these 80% with 20% of the effort.

Adjective Endings – My Two Steps in a Nutshell

The goal is to get -e and -en more or less correct with as little effort as possible.
And I have the perfect two steps for that.

Now you might have noticed that -e is part of -en.
In fact, e is part of ANY adjective endings.

e, en, em, er, es

It’s never wrong* (*exceptions apply), and so that gives us a VERY easy first step that literally ANYONE can do, even a complete beginner.

This last step definitely takes the most effort because we need to know the case and the gender and the endings the articles have.
But it’s nothing you need to worry about until you’re well into B1 level.

We’ll talk about this step in a separate lesson in more detail. I’ll link it below so you can check it out later

Today, we’ll focus on step one and step two, because like I said… those alone can help you pass the tests.

Adjective Endings Step 1 – Adding an “-e”

The first step to adjective endings is to add an “-e”.
Wait, let me do this in pink so it’s super annoying:

Add an “-e”

All the time with no exceptions**.
(**And by “no exceptions” I mean of course “very few exceptions”, because… you know… we’re learning German here after all)

You do not need to think about what gender the noun is or what case or what article type or weak declension or strong declension. None of that!
Adding an -e is something you can literally do on DAY 1 of your German learning journey.

• Der Kaffee ist heiß – der heiße Kaffee.
• The coffee is hot – the hot coffee.
• ▶
  
• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  
• Das Bild ist verkauft – das verkaufte Bild.
• The picture is sold – the sold picture.
• ▶
  
• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

And of course, if you have more than one adjective word, add an “-e” to all of ’em :).

• Das Bier ist lecker, schwarz, groß und kalt – das leckere, schwarze, große und kalte Bier…
• The beer is tasty, dark, large and cold – the tasty, dark, large and cold beer…
• ▶
  
• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

Now, doing this does not need you to “think”, but it DOES need some getting used to, especially if you’re an English speaker.

And the reason for that and also why it is so so important to actually start adding that -e is:

Rhythm.

Take a look at this pair

• the cold beer
• das kalt-e Bier

The English version has three syllable. Bam Bam Bam.
The German version, with the -e has four syllables.

• Bam Bam Bam.
• Bam Bam-bap Bam

This one letter completely changes the rhythm, because it actually adds another syllable. And that is a HUGE change. Humans are super sensitive to rhythm, and a lot of grammar is learned at least partially via rhythm and the sense of someting being wrong can also be triggered by rhythm.

Saying “das kalt Bier” , which is what many English speakers do, sounds super wrong and super basic. If you speak on B2 level and you make this mistake, you sound like A1 for a second.
Not because, the adjective ending is wrong, but because the FLOW is wrong.
You could say “Kalto Bier” with an “-o” instead of kaltes and it would already sound a LOT better than “kalt Bier“. The ending is still wrong, but the rhythm is right.
And if you’re a skilled mumbler, you can make it something between -e and -en and you’ll sound correct more than two thirds of the time

So adding the -e   as adjective ending doesn’t only get us correct about 40% of the time, which is already much better than guessing
It also gives us the correct rhythm for ALL adjective endings. So doing this one little thing, adding this -e, already makes us sound a LOT better and more natural.

And it’s so low effort, it borders on lazy.

Like… yes, you have to force yourself to do it, but you do not need to think about grammar at all.

Cool.
So that’s step 1.

Now, let’s take a look at step 2.

Adjective Endings Step 2 – When to add ‘-en’

As we’ve learned, -en is the most common adjective ending overall and if we find a way to get this right, we’re already between 70-80% combined with the -e we’re already doing anyway.

Now, to get the -en right, we do need to have some idea about the gender and case we’re dealing with.
So it’s not a “blind” hack like step 1 that we can just apply.

But at least in a test where you see the article and just have to fill in the noun, there’s a really simple rule of thumb you can follow:

Add “-en” whenever the article is weird.

Now you’re probably asking “Wait, what? What does that even mean – I find all the articles weird.”
Which is a fair point, so let me explain.

German has three genders and each gender has their own version of the – the famous der, die, das.
And also, each gender has their own version of a and those are also “not weird”.

• der – ein (masculine)
• die – eine (feminine)
• das – ein (neuter)

These are the “normal” articles.
And all the other variants of those… are weird.
Den? Weird.
Einen? Weird.
Dem? SUPER weird.
Eines? Well that’s pretty normal actually.
Nah kidding, it’s weird as hell!
So these are all weird, and you know what’s also weird – this:

• Ich gebe der Frau ein Buch. (Dative)
• Die Haare der Frau sind lang. (Genitive)

I mean… der Frau?! What the hell? We learned der is masculine. So this is definitely weird. And what’s also weird, at least for our purpose here, is using die for plural.  Sure, there’s a historical reason and yada yada yada, but let’s just play dumb and think die is for feminine. Then using it for the plural as well is… kind of weird. At least a little.

So bottom line – for our purpose here we say that the basic articles (der, die, das, ein, eine, ein)  are normal.
And all the others including secondary uses of the basics are weird.
Whenever the article is normal, we add “-e” to the adjective.
Whenever the article is NOT normal, we add “-en“.

That’s a pretty simple approach and we don’t need to worry about cases and all that.

But let’s see it in action and do some examples:

• Der groß__ Mann spricht mit der schön__ Frau, die die lang_ Straße langläuft.
• The tall guy talks to the pretty woman walking down the long street.

First up, we have der for Mann. This seems normal, because der is for masculine, so that should be große.
Then, we have der again but this time for a woman, which is kind of weird. So here, it should be schönen.
And then, we have die and we’ll assume that this is a quiz scenario, so it’ll be the correct article. So Straße is feminine and the article is normal, hence it should be lange.

And now let’s see the solution:

• Der große Mann spricht mit der schönen Frau, die die lange Straße langläuft.

Tadah, three out of three. Hooray!
Let’s do another one.

• Die groß__ Kellnerin gibt dem schön__ Mann einen groß__ Kaffee.
• The tall waitress gives the pretty guy a large coffee.

Die for waitress is normal, so it should be große.
But dem and einen are 100% weird, so the ending should be “-en” in both instances.
Let’s check the solution:

• Die große Kellnerin gibt dem schönen Mann einen großen Kaffee.

Three out of three again! Nice!
But hey… we’re doing science™ here, and science needs at least one more example.

• Maria ist sauer, weil Thomas in der voll___ Bar mit einer ander__ schön__ Frau redet.
• Maria is angry, because Thomas is talking with a different pretty woman in the crowded bar.

And here, for the first time, we’d actually really need to know the gender of the noun, because Bar could well be masculine. If that was the case, the article is “normal” and based on our system, we’d use volle.
But Bar is actually feminine, so with our system, we need vollen.
The second part is easy though, because we have einer for a woman, which is super duper weird, so here, we’ll go with -en.

And of course we’ll use it for BOTH adjectives.
Let’s check the solution:

• Maria ist sauer, weil Thomas in der vollen Bar mit einer anderen schönen Frau redet.

Let’s do one more try, this time with a plural.

• Die alt__ Männer lesen in einem klein__ Café  Zeitung.

Die is weird here, because Männer is plural and we said that using die for plural is weird.
And einem …well, that’s DEFINITELY weird, so it should be:

• Die alten Männer lesen in einem kleinen Café Zeitung.

And it is.

Now, of course I hand picked the examples and I could also pick some that are not as intuitive.
Like I said… for this stage of adjective endings, we kind of need to know the gender of the noun.
But there’s really no way around that, after all, and we still don’t have to worry about what case we’re looking at.

It’s not a perfect, fail-proof system. It’s a hack that is meant to help you get as many right as possible with as little effort as possible.

And the cool thing about this hack is that it’s not limited to der, die, das and ein, eine, ein.
It works for all kinds of article words.
mein, dein or kein follow the pattern of ein, eine, ein.

• Mein and meine are normal just like ein and eine are.
• Meiner, meines, meinem, meinen as well as meine for plural are WEIRD.

• unser and unsere are normal… all the others are weird.
• …

Things like diese, jene or welche and even manche work like the definite articles. Normal are:

• dieser (for male) – der
• diese (for female) – die
• dieses (for neuter) – das

All the rest is weird. Is jenem weird?
Yes. Is welche weird when it is asking for plural?
Sure is.

• Gestern habe ich meinen alt__  Mathelehrer getroffen.
• Yesterday, I met my old math-teacher.

Meinen is weird so we’ll go with -en…. and it’s correct.

• Welche berühmten Stars hast du schon mal getroffen?
• Which famous stars have you met?

Why is welche weird here? Because it is used for plural. We could say plural articles are weird by default or simply plural is -en.

Cool.
So that’s the hack and if you try it out, you’ll see that it generally works pretty well. At least the people in the comments say as much after they tried it out.

In fact, now it’s your turn.
I could of course do my own (and I do have exercises on adjective endings in this grammar module)  but then it would look like I’m cherry picking examples, so I thought it’s better to just use an already existing quiz from another site.

So here you go.
There is some tricky stuff in there and you really need to know the gender of things but I am curious how you do.

German Adjective Ending Quiz

That’s a pretty good site, by the way. The layout is a bit… well… like 1950s internet but the content is pretty good and at least it’s not plastered with ads and newsletter popups.

Anyway, let me know in the comments how you did.
And if you fail miserably, it is all my fault and my rule sucks.

Cool. That’s it for this lesson, if you have questions or suggestions just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.

Oh and if you want to really master adjective endings and understand the logic to get to 100%… here’s my lesson about it.

German Adjective Endings – The Actual Grammar