Hello everyone,
And welcome to our Word of the Week. And this time, it’s actually a chart of the week.
A chart for
German Adjective Endings
Now you might be like “Boring! I have seen enough of these tables.”
And maybe you have. But this one is NOT a table.
In fact, I’m pretty sure you have never seen this type of a chart for adjective endings before.
I mean, unless you’re a long time reader here. Then you might remember my epic German Case Triangle.
Basically, what this is is a new way to visualize and depict German case and gender endings. I do not like tables and they do not work for me as a way to learn stuff like this. And I was thinking that there must be different ways to represent the same information.
So I played around and came up with the German Case Triangle. Or we could say German Declension Triangle because it covers gender and case.
A while back, I showed it for the definite articles (I’ll leave a link below this article). And I wanted to do more, but then I kind of forgot about it.
But it works just as well for adjective endings and that’s what I want to show you today.
Now, if I just show you the chart without any commentary, it’ll seem super confusing because it’s just so different and there’s next to no explanation on it. I left that out on purpose so as to not clutter the frame.
I want the chart to be something that sticks in your memory easily and for that, it needs to be simple.
So what we’ll do now is we’ll build it up step by step, so when you look at the result, it’ll all make sense and you know what you’re looking at.
What’s important is that you bear with me while we build it up and keep an open mind :).
I didn’t say “It’s so different.” in the intro just to hype it up. It really is THAT different.
And still, there is a chance that it just doesn’t click for you. Like… I’m sure it’ll make sense, but maybe you’re just not vibing with it. And that’s totally okay. Everyone is different and learns differently. For some people, tables are the perfect form for this kind of information. But at least if you’re a visual learner, this might really be perfect for you.
Anyway, enough talk, let’s get to it!
The German Adjective Ending Triangle – Step by Step
I’m using the endings we need with definite articles for this one, but I’ll also give you the chart for the endings for indefinite articles later.
In the first step, we’re spreading out the three genders in a triangle. And we’ll throw the plural in with the feminine because those two behave almost identical with very few deviations.
Why do the boxes look like they’re hand drawn? Well, I just like it. It makes the whole thing look more human once all the information is there and it also creates visual contrast between the actual content and the “explanation”.
There’s a lot of empty space obviously, but we actually need it and I really want things to be separate from each other visually.
Cool.
Now, we’ll add the endings for the Nominative in each corner.
I chose NOT to use a specific adjective because that would just add clutter (and I made the articles gray for the same reason).
What matters is the ending that you need. You can just fill an adjective into the gap mentally if you want to.
- Die schöne Frau trinkt Bier.
- Die schönen Frauen trinken Bier.
- Der schöne Mann trinkt Bier.
- Das schöne Einhorn trinkt Bier.
Sweet, alle trinken Bier.
So far, so good.
Now, let’s add the Accusative.
And that might be a little confusing.
The green dot is basically the “path” to Accusative and as you can see, for feminine and neuter it just points back to what’s already there. Because the endings are… THE SAME.
Only for masculine nouns do we need a different ending: -en instead of just -e.
And this is indeed a general trend. Accusative endings tend to be the same as their Nominative counterparts and the only consistent exception is masculine.
In normal tables, Accusative gets its own row or column, but I think it makes sense to kind of group it up with Nominative and just mark the exception. Less “stuff”. Less to memorize and remember.
- Ich kenne die gute Fee.
- Ich vermisse die guten Ideen.
- Ich trinke den guten Wein.
- Ich lese das gute Buch.
Great!
And I think you know what cometh next – it’s Dative of course.
Tadah!!
Now you might be like “Wait, that’s just one ending. Does that mean it’s always the same?!”
And the answer is yes, it indeed is.
- Ich gebe der schönen Frau ein Bier.
- Ich gebe den schönen Frauen ein Bier.
- Ich gebe dem schönen Mann ein Bier.
- Ich gebe dem schönen Einhorn ein Bier.
And the best thing is, that this one ending ALSO covers Genitive.
- Das Bier der schönen Frau ist von mir.
- Das Bier der schönen Frauen ist von mir.
- Das Bier des schönen Mannes ist von mir.
- Das Bier des schönen Einhorns ist von mir.
In many tables, all this would make up two rows or columns. For essentially one thing. That’s why I put it in the center, because it’s really just one data point pretty much that all three genders share.
So yeah, that’s actually it. This is the full chart. Basically, instead of giving each gender its own row and each case its own column, I have given each gender its own “area in space” and shared endings get to share the same space more or less.
And now that you know how the triangle works, we can actually do a REALLY clutter-free version:
Here, I removed all explanatory elements, but the core information is still there – the adjective endings for definite articles, with feminine and plural at the top, masculine on the left, neuter on the right and Dative and Genitive in the center.
I think, this graph is actually REALLY easy to remember, at least for visual learners.
And also, with the super minimalist versions, we can immediately see the differences between endings for definite and indefinite articles when we put them side by side.
Here are a few examples:
- der schöne Mann – ein schöner Mann
- den schönen Mann – einen schönen Mann
- das schöne Einhorn – ein schönes Einhorn
- dem schönen Mann – einem schönen Mann
- ….
And we can of course use the same triangle format for the articles themselves or for pronoun endings and so on.
Now, I’m sure you’re a little confused and probably have a bunch of questions. Which we’ll of course talk about in the comments, but let me maybe go over a few obvious ones real quick and then I’ll give you the two big versions of the charts (definite and indefinite if you want to print them. And don’t worry, they’ll be WITH the explanatory bits :)
German Adjective Endings Triangle – Q&A
I’m feeling confused. Maybe I’m too stupid for this.
No, you’re not! It’s just very different to what you’re used to when it comes to charts for German endings. And maybe your brain just doesn’t like this type of spaced out format. Just give it some time to settle and if it still doesn’t work for you, then it’s just not your thing.
What do the two arrows from feminine, neuter mean?
Nothing really. They’re actually a leftover from the chart that was for articles. It could just as well be one arrow.
Can’t we combine both versions of adjective endings (definite and indefinite) into one chart?
Of course you can, but that’ll add clutter because you’d have to visually make clear which endings belong to which type of article. There are many ways to do that – color, font, row, a background.
I just like the “clean” chart better. It’s more intuitive and easier to take a mental snap shot of. But if you want to combine them, that’s great! You can really play around with it and modify it all kinds of ways till you get the perfect version for YOU.
Can we do the same for adjective endings when there is NO article?
Of course! But I’ll leave that up to you for now ;).
Can we do the same for articles and pronouns?
Yes, you can use the triangle format for anything that’s related to German gender and case endings. I’m actually thinking of vibe coding a little app for it. Or if you’re a programmer and you want to collaborate on this, please get in touch. I have some ideas!
Cool.
Those were the questions that I could think of off the top of my head, but like I said… let’s talk more in the comments.
But before we wrap up, here are the two links where you can download the high resolution versions of the two charts – with the explanatory bits.
There’s a lot of empty space on them too, if you want to add notes or examples.
- German Adjective Endings Triangle Chart – Definite Articles (pdf)
- German Adjective Endings Triangle Chart – Indefinite Articles (pdf)
And here’s the link to the article where I showed you the same type of chart but for articles.
- German Case Endings Triangle (article opens in new tab)
And that’s pretty much it for today.
I’m curious to hear how you like the charts and if you think they could work for you. And if you have any ideas or suggestions on how to modify them.
Or if you have come up with your own versions.
Because one of the things that I hope you take away from this is that you actually CAN and should play around with stuff like this. Tables are just one way to represent this information and I’m sure there are many others. Learning material keeps repeating the same stuff and I think we’re all collectively missing out on what’s possible if we get creative.
In fact, one of you has done just that after seeing my original case triangle and has come up with his very own types of charts, which take yet another approach. And he actually agreed to share them with you all here, so that’s coming up soon.
But for now, let’s wrap it up.
I really hope that the triangles help at least some of you better memorize the adjective endings and that you all get inspired to think outside the box even for grammar :).
Have a great week and see you next time.
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I’ve never found a chart that is easy to remember for me. Instead I have a mental flowchart:
Is declension already present (either from a der-word, an ein-word with an ending, or from -(e)s on the end of a genitive noun)?
(If yes) -> If noun is singular and still retains der/die/das from its nominative form, use -e; otherwise use -en (weak ending)
(If no) -> Add same ending from der-word (strong ending)
Genitive is really the trickiest one to remember (though it is covered by the rule) but luckily it’s pretty rare to end up in a situation where you use genitive without a der- or ein- word.
This is the best “flow chart” of this topic I have seen yet and it closely resemble what I describe in my articles. I call it “is the article weird” but the idea is the same … has it been altered or nah.”
I’ve seen the “is the article weird” article. I like it a lot! The only problem is for plurals, maybe I’ve been too fully assimilated because I don’t find “die” on the plural to be weird
This is way clearer than the original grid, although for me personally tables and charts work pretty well, but that’s definitely not true for a lot of people.
I also like that this version removes the concept of “first”, “second”, “third” and “fourth” cases. For me this numbering system is totally arbitrary, because you could write the table in any order. If you couldn’t, it wouldn’t be a table…
I wonder if other versions could also be useful, like a flowchart e.g.
Dat/gen? Y/N
> If Y, -en
> If N, plural? Y/N
> If Y, -en
> If N, masculine? Y/N
> If Y, nominative? Y/N
> If Y, -e
> If N, -en
> If N, -e
that’s just for the definite article though, it’s more complex for the indefinite article
It seems like a lot of teaching aids are just done in the same way because at some point someone decided that was the “best” way, but it totally ignores that different people have different ways of learning, and even if I can understand something via one kind of explanation, it doesn’t mean a different explanation won’t show me a different aspect and strengthen my understanding.
I think tables are just “good enough” and most textbook creators and teachers don’t feel the need to explore beyond reshuffling the tables. I have seen some flowcharts about this topic though, but I can’t remember where or how they looked like. It’s interesting how many ways there actually are to represent this information. I feel like we’re using maybe 10% of what’s possible. 80% of that might be useless, but we can never know if we never look :)
I just wanted to thank you, you Emanuel and everyone who donated a bit of money for some broke people like me <3 At the moment my life is VERY unstable but i really wanted to learn the language and it’s a life saver! Thank you all :]
As a visual learner, this chart is God sent. Thank you so much Emanuel!
I meant to comment on this a few days ago. Thank you for pointing out that everything in Dative and Genitive is -en. This is one of those things that if knew…but I just didn’t KNOW enough to free my mind when speaking. Now, when I (as my mouth is moving) realize I am heading into Dative I actually relax knowing there are no exceptions. Little victories! Thanks
Oh, this is great to hear!
The only exception is when there is NO article, so the adjective has to just pick up the slack and carry the case marker.
It’s so so important for people to understand that adjective endings are a) not crucial for speaking and b) not actually all that hard, as most of them are the same anyway.
“The only exception is when there is NO article…”
Geez deutsche Sprache, you are soooooo much a vibe killer :)
” not crucial ” Meaning the basic message will still be understood if the adj ending is correct or not. (?)
thank you so much deutsch language learning community . danke
Super helpful thanks!
Thank you so much to the people that pay the solidarity price! this helps so many people!
I agree that the ‘feminine + plural’ should be written as -e/-en. Also, in the final diagram on the right-hand side — meaning for indefinite articles — the key should also be -e/-en (not -e), just as it is for definite articles, unless I’ve missed something.
Also, unlike what is shown in the final diagram, there are no -er endings for adjectives modifying feminine or plural nouns when using indefinite articles. These are only seen in the absence of an article (Nullartikel).
Oh, true!!
I think for indefinite feminine, I thought I’ll do no plural because there is no indefinite plural article, but then for Dative I did include it so that’s inconsistent.
The “-er” for the indefinite articles was meant for the Genitive plural (without article). I guess it would make everything cleaner if I take out the plural for that one.
It’s awesome – Danke!
At the top of the definite article triangle, I would show the endings as
die___ e/en
meaning e for the feminine and en for the plural. It’s one of the few instances where the feminine and plural are not the same, and using your notation with the n in parentheses makes it look like the n is optional or used only in certain instances, whereas the n is well-defined, not optional or occasional, and always used for the plural (but only the plural).
Parentheses are appropriate, for example, when showing the genitive noun masc/neut ending -(e)s, because here the e is occasional, depending on the spelling of the noun.
Yes please!
Good point!
What you say about the implied sense of “()” makes sense.
I used them solely because I absolutely dislike the /. It has a super technical, bureaucratic feel for me that ruins the “vibe” I want the chart to have. But I can just go for | instead. That’s more “symmetrical”.
The other thing is that I wanted to not repeat “e” because it’s always there anyway.
It’s really a trade off between more explicit info and clutter.
Unless much mistaken, you send me not more than ONE message weekly.
Yup, one per week, more or less.
Mixed feelings here: on the one hand it is accurate, concise, methodical. But on the other hand, is it really usable in real time when you’re speaking? Personally, I would find it hard.
I assume it is the sign that all this declension stuff can’t be learnt in one go, but rather step by step, from the easy to the difficult, with enough time to let the mechanisms sink in. And especially without distracting the learner from the overarching goal, which is to speak German with pleasure.
(Don’t take me wrong, I am a big fan of this site. I’m just reflecting on the paths to learning).
is it really usable in real time when you’re speaking?
Oh, probably not but neither is a declension table.
For me, the triangle would be quicker but I’m a very spatial person.
The triangle, and any chart for that matter, is for when you do exercises or try to pass an exam or you write a text.
When you speak, you just speak. The rhythm is key there, and that’s why the first step of my three step adjective endings approach is adding an “-e”.
If learners can train themselves to do that in speaking, they’ve already come a long way.
Totally agree!
It’s always a struggle, isn’t it, fluency vs. accuracy! Certainly, I don’t blame foreigners for easily getting frustrated to tears with adjective declensions, as they’re probably as much a pain as those phrasal verbs aka prepositional phrases are for Germans learning English.
I like the triangle! It’s a new way to think about something that was always slightly annoying.
Just curious- how are German kids taught endings in school? Do they get the classic charts or something else or do they just learn by immersion and repetition what is right?
We’re not taught them in school at all. We have it down when we get to school through flow and immersion. I think many adults aren’t even really aware that they’re a thing.
Und then later, when kids are taught the cases in school, they are told to ask themselves “was passt hier, wer wen oder wem?” and they learn the names of the cases that go with those. Which is completely useless if you didn’t grow up speaking German.
Yup, pretty much.
We even call them “wer-Fall, wem-Fall, wen-Fall and wes-Fall” in school. Sometimes, language teachers will even tell this to their language students, that they should ask themselves what question word to use. Basically, learners should pull themselves up by their bootstraps :)
Not sure whether the following would mean much to non-native speakers, but when we were in grade school during the late ’60’s, I’ll never forget that poem by Christian Morgenstern, “Der Werwolf”, which cleverly outlines the cases in a wickedly funny rhyme!
Again, foreigners, particularly Anglophone adult learners, might not find the above especially useful, rather much like teaching English to non-native English speakers by using Gilbert & Sullivan. More fun for the teacher than the poor student:-)
Haha, “wer” Wolf, er wird nur Singular
Oh Christian Morgenstern is soooo good with these wordplays!
Isn’t that the truth! After all, we as children learned to play with language in our native tongue. Word play, really language play, informs how we manipulate speech, in the end, thought as well.
Sorry to add to the confusion, but in school, we learned that some declensions are possible, for example, “auf weichEM weissEM Schnee” alongside “auf weichEM weissEN Schnee”!
Frankly, the second sounds more correct, even natural, to me as a native speaker, what’s more, the DUDEN agrees.
VERY interesting case!!
Yes, the latter sounds more natural to me too.
I think there might be the same logic at work here as there is for the question of whether or not we separate adjectives by comma.
The first one considers both adjectives equal, and they’re both describing the noun Schnee.
The other version considers “weißer Schnee” a unit and that then gets qualified with “weich”. Like as if to contrast it to hard “white snow”.
In this case, the first adjective then basically acts like the article, and the second one declines like it would if an indefinite article was there.
Yep, yep!
Hello,
Let’s correct some typos first:
“have never this type of a chart” (have never seen this type of chart)
“Ido not like” (I do not like)
“which endings belongs to which type of article” (which endings belong to which type of article)
“we’re all collective missing out” (we’re all collectively missing out)
Yes, I LOVE these diagrams. As a visual learner myself, it’s obvious they work a lot better for me than the boring charts :)))
Thanks and bis bald!
A total gamechanger for me! Thank you so much!
Happy to hear that!!
What is the (-er) for in the indefinite article dative area? I know it would be “Ich gebe einer shönen Frau mein Herz”, but you don’t mark the other gender article changes so … what am I missing?
Maybe it’s for feminine plural in the genitive, since the diamond is for both dative and genitive. There’s no indefinite plural article, of course, so the adjective gets “er” on the end.
That’s the only thing I can think of that would fit.
On the diagram for the definite articles, it kind of throws me off that it doesn’t show the dative articles. I guess it’s assumed that you know them, but it does show the accusative articles. Last year’s chart had the dative ones in the middle, which I thought worked well.
It’s for the plural (which has no article in this case). I thought taking out the plural but I wanted to keep it consistent.
But I should probably add a footnote.
Sorry but I don’t get it. Do you have an example sentence? I thought it would be:
“Ich gebe schönen Frauen mein Herz”
Oh, nvm. Genitiv. “die Herzen schöner Frauen”. The (-er) is the thing that really sticks out to me in that table.
I think I have to take it out and just have no plural forms at all in the indefinite table. Seems like it does add some confusion, judging be the other comments, and I’d probably be confused too after a couple of months not looking at this.
Although the plural does not strictly take indefinite articles, it does take negative and possessive determiners (keine, meine, deine, etc). For example, „Ich habe keine roten Äpfel.“ Or, „Das sind meine roten Äpfel.“ Thus, the adjective ending („roten“ in this example) remains consistently -en. I would definitely not complicate the diagram by including the -e ending that is really only applicable to the complete absence of an article/determiner (Nullartikel).
I’m not sure if this would be helpful to anyone but this is what one of my teachers said about adjective endings:
When you look at the article + adjective + noun, you have to be able to derive some of the following:
– Whether it’s definite/indefinite;
– if it’s singular/plural/uncountable;
– the gender and the case…
Sounds a little obvious and redundant tbh but i’ll elaborate (i already know this is going to be very loooong)
#1. the nominative case:
Since the definite articles der/die/das (singular) already provide all of the above, the adjectives take the ending -e for all of them; now you still need to differentiate between the singular feminine and the plural, so the adjective for a plural noun takes the -en-ending if the articles are indefinite/there’s no article, the endings of the adjectives reflect the gender, and the article for the feminine is eine instead of ein also since indefinite plural articles do not exist, i’ll consider that no article.
#2. the accusative case:
for feminine/neutral/plural nouns + definite articles it’s the same as the nominative, for the masculine it’s den instead of der (to mark the case?) and the adjective takes the -en-ending instead;
don’t even get me started on the evil N-Deklination for weak masculine nouns >:
(for indefinite articles/no article the adjective ending is the same as the definite articles, so you can tell the gender+case)
#3. the dative case:
For the dative and genitive cases there’s almost no way to differentiate a masculine and a neutral noun (except if it has the N-Deklination, then it’s definitely masculine), but at least you know it’s not feminine :v (yay?)
The definite article for feminine nouns is der instead of die (now you know it’s neither nominative nor accusative!), for masculine/neutral ones it’s dem (definitely dative!), for plural nouns it’s den and there’s an extra -n appended to the noun itself (also definitely dative!);
this ending change also applies to indefinite articles, so einem, einer, einem; if there’s an article at all then the adjectives end in -en for all genders (plural included)if there’s no article then the adjectives take those dative endings instead (and the -n behind plural nouns).
#4. the genitive case:
Again, the articles for masculine/neutral nouns take the -es ending and there’s an -(e)s at the end of the noun itself, but this time the articles for feminine/plural nouns both take the -er ending;
The adjective endings for the nouns with an article here are -en (so like dative) for masculine/neutral nouns with no article, the adjective has the same ending with those with an article; for feminine/plural nouns with no article the adjectives both take the ending -er for… idk, you can differentiate plural nouns in the dative/genitive this way i guess
Conclusion:
It’s not a perfect way of thinking about it, but it mostly works (the declination is the same between dative/genitive for feminine nouns);
i’m sorry if this is too confusing; i do not condone trying to learn endings by heart anyway, maybe it would help to read this comment and a declination table side by side.
if you’re wondering about the other articles that are not der/die/das or ein…
dieser/derjenige/derselbe/solcher/welcher/jeder/mancher follow the definite article declination
kein/irgendein and the possessive articles follow the indefinite article declination (or definite article if it’s plural, cmiiw) but i’d not bother with that for now :)
i’m not sure what went wrong with the formatting but i’ve already edited this comment like 3 times so i guess i’ll just give up :(
Thanks a lot for trying. No idea why it doesn’t save it, but I’ll do some formatting for you.
Love the simplicity of the charts. But since the only way to know if anything works is actually using it, I suggest making a quiz in which answers are provided along with highlighted versions of the chart demonstrating how we are supposed to think. I’m not telling you to tell us how to think. Wait, yes I am.
======
I know you hate proofreading; that’s why readers like me were created.
The phrase “you have never this type”
is missing the verb “seen”
(I know you can omit the verb in German but in English you …)
In the sentence “You can just fill gut into the gap mentally” I have no idea what you mean by “gut”?
In “Accusative endings tend to be the same as they’re Nominative counterparts”
“they’re” should be “their”
The green font on the “en” is missing in “Das Bier des schönen Einhorns ist von mir”
Thanks a lot for these!! Much appreciated.
As for gut, I actually meant the German adjective “gut”, but now when I read it, it took me a second as well, so I’ve rephrased that a bit.
As for skipping the verb… I don’t feel like there’s a big difference between German and English in that regard and in that instance, leaving it out in German would be just as wrong :)