Category: Essential German Grammar

Even people who don’t study German know that Nein means no in German. But of course that’s only the beginning to German negation. The German adverb nicht and adjective kein can be used to negate a sentence as well. Nicht is the English equivalent of “not”. Kein, on the other […]

Many common verbs in German belong to a category called separable-prefix verbs or inseparable-prefix verbs. In general, they are conjugated just like all other German verbs, but you need to know what happens to the prefix when you use these verbs. Separable prefixes, as the name implies, usually (but not […]

I. Predicate Adjectives POSITIVE adjective/adverb + no ending Meine Mutter ist schön. Meine Mutter ist intelligent. COMPARATIVE adjective/adverb + -er Meine Schwester ist schöner. Meine Schwester ist intelligenter.* SUPERLATIVE am + adjective/adverb +  – (e)sten [e is inserted if adj. ends in –d, -t, or s-sound] Meine Tochter ist am […]

1. Temporal prepositions vor, nach and während The prepositions vor, nach and während are your friends. Why? Using any one of them is a simple way to orient your sentence temporally, in other words, to explain when something happened in relation to something else. ➝ Vor is used to say […]

1. Mastering Verb Conjugations The first two fundamental verbs in German are haben (to have) and sein (to be). The conjugations for these have to be learned by heart. One easy way to do so is to take a die made of either cardboard or wood and label all the […]

An adverb is the part of speech (or word class) that’s primarily used to modify a verb, adjective, or other adverbs and can additionally modify prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, and complete sentences. An adverb that modifies an adjective — as in “quite sad” — or another adverb — as in […]

In German, the position of nicht (not) in a sentence is actually quite simple and straightforward. You just have to keep in mind a few points and nicht will fall right into place. 1. Nicht as an Adverb Nicht is an adverb, so you will always find it either before or after a verb, adjective […]

Just like in English, the German infinitive is the basic form of a verb (schlafen/to sleep). However, it is less frequently found than in English to be accompanied by the preposition zu/to. The following is an overview of specifics pertaining to the German infinitive. THE ENDING OF GERMAN INFINITIVES Most German […]

Present Perfect Tense   In English, present perfect tense is formed with the auxiliary verb “have” plus the past participle of the main verb, for example: “He has studied for a month.” German present perfect tense likewise relies on an auxiliary verb plus the main verb’s past particle. The three main differences […]

The passive voice is used much less in German than in English, but it is used Active and passive voice forms are not tenses. The active or passive voice can be in the present, past, future or any other tense.  To conjugate verbs in the passive voice, you must know […]