Hello everyone,
And welcome to the inofficial second part of my lesson about
German Adjective Endings
In the main lesson, we did some basic statistics on the adjective endings and then came up with a simple two step approach that is basically the 80/2- approach. It gives us 80% of endings with just 20% of the effort.
If you want to check that out, just to to the lesson in the menu above
Today, we’ll go all perfectionist and learn what we need to get the remaining 20% correct.
And this will truly be 80% of the effort because today we’ll talk serious grammar.
There is some logic that we’ll discover though, and we’ll get some deeper insights into the endings in general.
So are you ready?
Then in we hop :)
***
And we’ll start with a little bit of background.
German Endings Are Messed up
German isn’t the only language that uses adjectives as carried for grammar markings for gender, case or number. In fact, that’s pretty for languages to wave this information in your face all the time.
Like, you’re just chilling, reading a book, and the endings are like:
“Look, this is feminine plural”
and you’re like
“Okay… I don’t really care, but thanks, I guess.”
The thing is that many languages are rather coherent about their markings.
Like Spanish for instance which
It adds endings to adjectives like so:
- o – masculine, singular
- a – feminine singular
- os – masculine plural
- as – feminine plural
Sure, there are some exceptions here and there, but overall it’s consistent and it’s similarly straight-forward in Italian and French.
This is not so bad actually. In fact, when you read something you can tell the gender of a new noun just based on this.
In principle, German is the same.
It also uses adjectives to mark gender, case and number of the noun.
The problem is not that the German makes these marks. The problem is that the German marking system is MESSED UP!
Because back when the question of who has to carry what markings came up in one of the design meetings for the German language, the nouns were quite unwilling to participate.
They were like:
“We already carry the meaning. We will not carry anything extra. The articles carry gender and this stuff.”
Of course the articles weren’t too pleased.
“What?! We are so tiny and we have to carry gender, case and number? YOUR gender, case and number? Yeah, that ain’t happening.”
What followed were endless debates and committees and rounds of reconciliation. Experts for efficiency were brought in. And some sound designers. And even a language learner, though no one listend to what he had to say.
And finally, after centuries of barter and bargaining, a compromise was found about who has to carry what when. A political compromise.
And we all know how these THOSE look like.
Millions of regulations and special cases to satisfy every last group of interest (except the learners, of course).
So how messy is the result?
Well, long answer: Nouns kind of focus on plural, while articles take care of gender and case, and adjectives have to assist the articles.
And it really depends. Sometimes everything is marked, sometimes the marks are split and sometimes nothing is marked. And some marks look the same.
Or to give you a practical example:
| Example | Markings |
|---|---|
| den schönen Wagen | accusative + singular + masculine |
| der schöne Wagen | nominative + singular + masculine |
| der schönen Wagen | genitive + plural + masculine |
| den schönen Wagen | dative + plural + masculine |
I mean, can you see ANY system in that?
I don’t.
And that’s why adjective endings is so confusing and the tables are so hard to remember.
Because it just seems so chaotic and arbitrary.
Like, if we try to “see the full picture” because that would look a bit like this:
Still, we want to get 100% of the endings correct, so we kind of work with the mess.
And the best way to do that is to think of the adjectives endings as follows:
German Adjective endings help the articles with their marking chores.
So to understand adjective endings, we need to first talk about article endings.
Definite Articles vs Indefinite Articles and their Markings
There are two main types of articles in German.
First, there are the definite articles. Those are are of course der, die, das (the) but also groups like diese- or manche-.
And then, there are the indefinite articles, which are the group around ein, eine (a) but in terms of grammar, hey also include the possessive articles like mein (my) or dein (you’re).
And yes! The you’re was on purpose. I’m checking if your still paying attention ;).
Both groups of articles do carry markings for gender, case and number.
Here’s the table.
| Case | Fem | Masc | Neut | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nom | die eine | der ein | das ein | die — |
| Acc | die eine | den einen | das ein | die — |
| Dat | der einer | dem einem | dem einem | den — |
| Gen | der einer | des eines | des eines | der — |
Clearly, there’s a LOT of overlap, like we said earlier. der can be singular+ masculine + nominative, but also singular + feminine + Dative or plural + genitive .
That’s what makes it confusing after all.
And as you can see, the definite articles and indefinite ones do line up for the most part, but there are some deviations where the indefinite version carries a bit less information than the definite ones. I’ve marked that in colors. It’s mainly for masculine vs neuter where the indefinite versions skip marking the gender.
- Der Kaffee ist heiß.
- Das Auto ist teuer.
- Ein Kaffee ist heiß.
- Ein Auto ist teuer.
And there’s no indefinite article at all for plural, so let’s take the definite articles as our baseline.
Those are the marking chores that need to be done, basically.
And with that, we now get to the adjective endings.
Adjectives Endings – taking up the mark
The adjective endings basically support the articles with their marking chores. More specifically, it supports the d-articles. The definite ones.
So what we’ll do is NOT look at the adjective endings through the lens of “What case and gender do we have” but rather “What is the article doing?”
Let’s take a look.
Oh and we’ll skip the plural for now and do that separately later. It’s more obvious that way what’s going on.
| Case | Fem | Masc | Neut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nom | die gut-e | der gut-e | das gut-e |
| Acc | die gut-e | den gut-en | das gut-e |
| Dat | der gut-en | dem gut-en | dem gut-en |
| Gen | der gut-en | des gut-en | des gut-en |
As you can see, there’s only -e or -en here. .
If the in base form singular, the adjective just gets an -e for flow essentially.
- das schöne Fahrrad
- die schöne Frau
- …
If the article has changed somehow, like den, dem or der for feminine, or it’s plural, then the adjective kind of does a solidarity change too and takes on an extra “-n”. Think of it as a fan scarf maybe.
- dem schönen Fahrrad (Dative)
- der schönen Frau (Dative or Genitive)
Note that it doesn’t really matter what case or gender we’re dealing with.
All we need to know is “Has the article changed or not.”
Cool.
Now, the key to the remaining 20% of endings that we HAVEN’T covered yet with the hacks we’ve been using so far is what happens when there is NO definite article involved.
Let’s take a look (and again, we’ll skip the plural).
| Case | Fem | Masc | Neut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nom | eine gut-e | ein gut-er | ein gut-es |
| Acc | eine gut-e | einen gut-en | ein gut-es |
| Dat | einer gut-en | einem gut-en | einem gut-en |
| Gen | einer gut-en | eines gut-en | eines gut-en |
I have grayed out all the things that are the same as before. So an -e for normal feminine and the solidarity -en for whenever the article has changed in some way.
The one KEY difference to the table before is that that the article takes on the gender marking that the definite article had that is now missing for masculine and neuter.
- da-s schön-e Fahrrad (the pretty bike)
- ein schöne-s Fahrrad (a pretty bike)
- de-r schöne Mann (the…)
- ein schöne-r Mann (her pretty man)
Basically, if you have ein or mein or kein or whatever, the adjective will take on the gender mark. The rest is as we already learned it, either -e or -en
And now, let’s see what happens if there is NO article at all.
- Cold water is refreshing.
Here, we just have an adjective and a noun together.
It’s nowhere near as common as having an article, but it does happen and that’s the most “interesting” table
So let’s take a look. And I’ll add the definite article versions for comparison.
| Case | Fem | Masc | Neut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nom | gut-e die gute | gut-er der gute | gut-es das gute |
| Acc | gut-e die gute | gut-en den guten | gut-es das gute |
| Dat | gut-er der guten | gut-em dem guten | gut-em dem guten |
| Gen | gut-er der guten | gut-en des guten | gut-en des guten |
Do you see what’s going on?
If the definite article has a special ending, then the adjective will take that over if the article is not there.
- Da-s kalte Wasser ist erfrischend.
- Kalte-s Wasser ist erfrischend.
- De-r heiße Kaffee schmeckt gut.
- Heiße-r Kaffee schmeckt gut.
And it doesn’t matter what mark it is. The adjective will take anything…
- Zu de-m gute-n Wein esse ich Käse. (I eat cheese with the good wine.)
- Zu gute-m Wein sag’ ich nicht nein. (I don’t say no to good wine.)
- Ab de-r nächste-n Woche habe ich mehr Zeit. (I will have more the starting the following week )
- Ab nächste-r Woche habe ich mehr Zeit. ( same as above)
The only difference is Genitive, where it would be the noun that gets the -s for masculine and neuter while the adjective stays with -en.
- Geschmack guten Biere-s
That’s such a rare case though, you really don’t have to worry about that too much. What matters mainly is that the adjective will take on a Dative -m or -r if the article is not there, and it’ll take on the gender marks for das and der.
It is confusing, no doubt, but I think the best way is to practice by sound. Just write out a few pairs and then read them.
- das kalte Bier – kaltes Bier
- mit dem kalten Bier – mit kaltem Bier
- ….
The key really is that the adjective takes over the marking of the definite article most of the time.
And just to be sure… as long as you’re shaky on the articles, you don’t have to worry about the adjectives AT ALL. Just use the two hacks we already learned – adding and -e by default and another -n if the article is weird.
And then slowly fade in the stuff of today over time.
All right.
Now, so far, we’ve ignored the plural, so let’s take a quick look at that as well.
| Case | Plural |
|---|---|
| Nom | gut-e die gut-en |
| Acc | gut-e die gut-en |
| Dat | gut-en den gut-en |
| Gen | gut-er der gut-en |
This is pretty simple though. If there is an article, then the adjective just gets -en, full stop. No matter the case or gender.
And if there’s no article, the adjective takes on the mark the article had.
And that’s pretty much it!
Recap
Basically, we have broken down the adjective endings into three steps.
- Add an -e. No matter what. It is always there…. okay almost always
- Add an -en whenever the article ending is weird or is plural
- If there is a marking of definite articles, missing the adjective will take it**
(**except in Genitive, but we’ll ignore that)
Step one is easy to do and you don’t need to know ANYTHING about cases and gender to do it.
Step two needs just some intuition to get decent results.
And step three… well that’s the one where you really do need to know your article tables.
Like I said… step three is NOT something you just start doing one day. It’s something to slowly fade in.
Keep this concept in mind of “Adjective takes over missing article marks”
And then one day, you’ll be like
- Wieviel kostet ein große Kaffee… wait… ein großer Kaffee because it is der Kaffee
So there we are. This was my series about adjective endings and if you apply all you’ve learned today and ignore the weird Genitive exception, you’ll be sitting nice and pretty in the 95% correct range.
If you have any questions or suggestions or if you want me to give you more examples – I feel like I have been a bit stingy today – just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
Oh by the way… here’s a small exercise.
And if you fail, then it’s my fault :)
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I really appreciated all of this Emanuel. Thank you.
Happy it helps :)
This cleared up quite a bit for me. Got just under 80% on the test but I fully understood each mistake I made after. Very good stuff to keep in my mind moving forward. You are fantastic at what you do!
” but I fully understood each mistake I made after.”
This really is the most important part! Freut mich zu hören!
This is the only way I am getting more motivated to learn German grammar, man you make it so fun hahaha
I wish I’d seen this series years ago. It would have saved me so much time looking back at those tables I painstakingly made.
This 3rd part, of course, requires the most thought and although it did help, it also hurt. You asked for suggestions at the end, so I will confirm what you said: it needed a lot more examples.
There are just so many possibilities that you can’t possibly handle that much when you’re a newbie. I’ve got a PhD, taught Organic Chemistry, and published in top scientific journals. But the best I’ve done is pass B1 level German tests. Plus, my experiences in Germany made me realize I’ll probably always be a newbie.
Here’s an example, I had a lot of trouble in the section where you say possessive articles like ihr are “part of the ein-articles”
Although you were acknowledging this was a little strange, I still couldn’t get it at first. Yes, I finally got it, after considerable pain which literally caused me to need a nap. Only when I awoke and tried again did I get it (oh yeah, ihr is like dein so it’s kind of einy).
So, I think it would be better if you listed out the ein-articles so that learners like me didn’t have to go through that pain.
You see, newbies can only juggle 2 and maybe 3 things at once. Just to juggle the gender and the case is a big deal, but then when you throw in ein word markers the juggler starts getting dizzy. And then you throw in the adjective endings and we drop everything. We’re not Germans after all!
So then adding something like that section on genitives it was like asking us to juggle as you kick us in the groin. So, I just ignored my eyes glazing over and focused on the summary afterward: focus on rules 1 and 2. Then for ein or no articles apply the marking concept if I immediately know the gender and case (doubtful), otherwise go back to rule 1.
My bottom line is that we need many examples and then many quizzes to learn this level of juggling. And come to think of it, I was reviewing this whole series before trying out a quiz you have… I need to get back to that.
But I’m really wondering, how do Germans learn stuff like this???
Great points, this article definitely needs a do-over, and you’re completely right that I used to be a bit lacking on the “conventional side”. Like… back a few years ago, I would be like “I’m not gonna list out everything, they can google that everywhere and I want to be DIFFERENT”, but that does get in the way of fluent learning and it’s an inferior product, after all.
Like… no one will say “I became a member BECAUSE the list of articles was missing”, for example.
There are three quizzes though, one for each gender, so you can completely focus on the endings without thinking whether a thing is der, die or das.
I would recommend just trying one right away. You do NOT need to get every ending right. You won’t in daily life anyway because you’ll not always know the correct gender of a thing, so even if you’re 100% on adjective endings, no one will know.
This really is one field to not be perfectionist about.
Germans learn this through osmosis. You just know what sounds right, what “feels” right. And whenever you venture into an area of language that you rarely ever hear, certainty breaks down quickly. I can’t think of an example, but yeah… we do not have to learn this consciously, like you do. You have it MUCH harder!
I was re-checking the articles on adjective endings to remember how you explained the topic, because, even though I forgot a lot of the explanation itself since it was a while back, I still remembered you explained it in a much better\simpler way than my A2 course did :)
Vielen Dank, dass Sie es uns einfacher gemacht haben.
P.S. If there’s a typo that’s on Google, I don’t know how to write that sentence on my own just yet :D
Gerne :)
oh my, Emanuel! this series about adjective endings is just something! You made the seemingly complex and mysterious (for me) topic so easy to understand! And I am still in my A2 level. Your explanations about marking just makes so much sense to me! Did the test, got 91% (2 mistakes), should’ve been more careful.
Awesome, I’m really happy to hear that :)! Once you understand the notion of marking, or “sloppy marking” as we could call it for German, there’s no more real confusion about this stuff. Doesn’t mean that you can speak it fluently, but it’s not just some random assortment of endings.
exactly! I feel a bit more confident now than before
Did the test. Got them all right, but was given a score of only 17/22, because I didn’t attempt to use umlauts or sharp s (used ‘e’ and ‘ss’).
Well, that’s a 22/22 then :)
Just gotta say, this is the best time I’ve had learning German. I’m chuckling (or knee-slapping hollering) half of the time, as well as actually understanding and absorbing upon first read. Wish I had put all those $$$ of tuition for German language schools here instead
Vielen Dank für dieses tolle Feedback!!!
Hi. I stumbled upon your site while searching for help learning German. So far, I really like your style and perspective … your explanations are often WAY better than other people’s.
I have one suggestion. When you are dealing with gender-based differences, can you keep your explanations and examples in the same gender order, e.g. male, female, neuter? German genders and grammar are a pain, so while many of us are trying to learn it, I think consistency can help with our mental mappings.
For example ….
You first put the articles in the classic male (m), female (f), neuter (n) order:
then you use this order (f) (m) (n):
then you make a reference using this order (n) (f) (m):
and then immediately follow that with examples in the order (n) (m) (f):
and then follow up with examples in the classic order (m) (f) (n):
Danke!
I will be reading more of your articles in the coming days/weeks/months.
I come from China and find your way of explaining the adjective endings incredibly genius! You saved my life from these unbelievable grammar tables which are killing me. A big thank you Emanuel!
I’m really happy to hear that the method works for you, thanks a lot und viele Grüße nach China!
So if i have understood it correctly,
“e” for talking is the best
“en” for the rest
“er,em,es” well be my guest
Great explanation, who would have thought that some Humor could make German so fun and easy to learn.
Emanuel you are literally the best teacher, they should update all the German teaching books and just add your notes, that way German learning will be so much easier.
Thanks so much for this great feedback :).
And I love the little summary you made of the “rules”!
20/22! I love the „weird article” principle.
Great to hear that :)!
21/22 :))
Sweet :)!!
21/22 on the quiz. Wow. Surprised myself.
Thank you.
Happy to hear that!!
Since you know quite a lot of my writing… would you say there’s too much clutter in these posts?
Honest opinion please, I feel like they could use a trimming.
Maybe. This is already a big topic with lots of details. But it is hard to know what nugget-of-truth someone is looking for. Thus, cutting something out might remove that piece.
My feelings are that – coming from Parts 1 and 2, the start of this final part 3 gets off slow with a lot of humor recap banter and then the aside to the “Awful German marking system”. I think you could make the first part VERY short, and just tell to reader that if they ended here by accident, they are arriving in Act 3. Then – you never really explain WHY we going to take a detour/journey to the marking system before getting back to the adjective endings the final 20%.
For sure however, in the “Adjective – taking up the mark” section, there are a few places where the text colorings/opacity get confusing. Some of the core examples (bullet pointed) are in the lighter color which makes them seem less important. Then when you take the red-exception phone call (“ hey John man”), you don’t come OUT of the lighter color when you return to your normal voice at “Ok, I’m back with you”.
Awesome feedback!! I’ll do a do-over next week and incorporate lots of what you said :)!
Could you help me understand the rationale for the jeder..jedem endings in ‘Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen’ ?
Yes :)!
This is short for “everybody does/works/acts/performs acccording to their abilities”
The exact verb is not clear, but “jeder” is subject and so it’s Nominative.
This is short for “give to everybody according to their needs”.
Here, “jedem” is the indirect object and hence in Dative.
Hope that helps!!
The part on the discussion between the articles and the nouns has me dying. Pure gold. Also, I get really amazed at how you manage to find the most inventive, intuitive and simple paths (that are possible haha) to explain things that are absurd and make no sense.
Really happy to see you’re having a good time here :)!
This is the very first material I’ve read on this topic that has brought clarity. (I almost said “made sense,” but it certainly does not.) VIELEN DANK!!!!!!
Happy to hear that :)!
wow wow wow
thank you so much!!!! i can finally grasp the topic. subscribed!
No difference in meaning, just in how you’d analyse the grammar.
“eines jedes Buches” sounds like absolute garbage to me and I would NEVER say it, but I can’t really argue my point grammatically :).
I just THINK it should be “eines jeden” but I have ZERO to back it up.
Englisch für die Antwort ist ganz OK, I am still working on my German with your help (super, as ever :) )
Maybe it was just a typo in the book then, though I was even more confused by the ‘eines jeden’ combination. Is there a more general rule/grammatical explanation why German wants/tolerates the ‘eines’, when just ‘jedes’ would seem to do the job?
There’s no rule here, it’s just an alternative phrasing that puts a little more emphasis and sounds a bit poetic.
Interesting! I think I’ll wait a while (probably forever) to try to appreciate this poetry :-) Am still working on the basics.
This thread was from a year ago. Now we have this site’s ChatGPT Sentence Correction Tool to check in with. It’s not so poetic! Here’s its response to the original sentence (line breaks added):
Correction: Damit steht und fällt der Erfolg eines jedes Buches.
English Translation: With this, the success of every book stands and falls.
German Translation: Mit diesem steht und fällt der Erfolg jedes Buches.
Ah, it’s clearly at its limits here :)
What I am currently have the tool do is translate the original sentence to English and then have GPT translate it back to German.
That worked better than just asking it for mistakes, I found.
But here, it clearly fails with the translation and the original phrasing is lost.
It might actually catch the “eines jedes” error if asked directly because “eines jeden” is a quite likely combination of words.
I think I need to do some more testing with the tool anyway to decide what the best way is to ask for corrections.
Oh, sorry, dass ich auf Englisch geantwortet habe. Ich komme manchmal durcheinander bei den Kommentaren.