BUT it’s not the noun itself that tells us which case it’s in … it’s the words coming in front of the noun that tell us the noun’s case! Why does the noun in the genitive case have the strong declension, too? noun phrase: this young dog (nominative ← randomly assigned), ‘this’ = dies-‘big’ = groß–dog = Hund (masculine), So this is where we’d need to be on the chart: the masculine nominative. The dog is big and brown. There are two types of declensions: strong and weak. To understand these endings, you need to be familiar with the "hard" endings for nouns from Section II.3. single. All the vital German case system declensions info is here in this one chart. . Here’s the thing: we have to know which case a noun is in, right? You probably assume you need to know the case of the noun (nominative, accusative, dative, or genitive; listed down the right side of the chart). Again, this is the end result for the nominative: diesEr große Hund. © 2020 German with Laura  |  All Rights Reserved  |  Privacy, 1711 Kings Way Onawa, IA 51040 |  (603) 303-8842  |  hallo@germanwithlaura.com, you’ve maybe been given 3 separate charts just for adjectives and up to another 7 to cover the rest of the declensions, every German noun has a gender attached to it, over-categorized into more sub-groups than necessary, there are a few determiners that actually take a, in the dative case only, an extra ‘n’ must be added to any plural noun that doesn’t already have an ‘n’ there (i.e. But now, we’re going to put it into the three other cases. I’ll italicize the determiner/adjective, bold the declensions and CAPITALIZE the filler ‘e’s so you can see the different components more clearly: Do you see how we need a filler ‘e’ with dies- before adding the -r declension? Sometimes, the same strong & weak declension combo is shared by 2 different genders in the same case (e.g. Master adjective declension with Lingolia’s simple declension tables and online lesson, then … nominative: kalte Milchaccusative: kalte Milchdative: kalter Milchgenitive: kalter Milch, Declension Pattern #3 (adjective only) requires the strong declension in each case– do you see it on the end of our base adjective ‘kalt’? But in German, those little endings we put on the tailends of adjectives tell us absolutely crucial information. OK, now we’re going to take the feminine noun Milch (milk) and talk about ‘cold milk’ in each of the four cases. the declensions for the nominative & accusative are identical. First, let’s work with the same example as the masculine (‘this big dog’), but replace ‘dog’ with ‘cat’ (<– die Katze, feminine noun): nominative: diese große Katzeaccusative: diese große Katzedative: dieser großen Katzegenitive: dieser großen Katze. . What is the deal with German adjective endings?! Change the order like I did in those examples and the meaning of the sentence changes, too. You can see that with these examples of ‘these big … dogs/cats/pigs’: nominative: diese großen … Hunde / Katzen / Schweineaccusative: diese großen … Hunde / Katzen / Schweinedative: diesen großen … Hunden / Katzen / Schweinengenitive: dieser großen … Hunde / Katzen / Schweine. To shake things up, we will use declension pattern #3 (adjective only) in these examples! Using the case system is all about putting those endings on adjectives (and determiners) so we know which noun is doing what. German adjectives work just like English ones, except that they take on case endings when they come right before a noun: Der Hund ist groß und braun. Note: the determiner and/or adjectives that come in front of a noun are said to be ‘modifying’ (i.e. German declensions or ‘endings’ on adjectives (and other words) tell us who is who in a sentence. That’s a big deal – it’s how we know who is who in a sentence. time: We’ve just talked about the 4 declension patterns and I’m going to assume you understand noun gender and noun case (<– but if not, read my guides on those topics!). But we don’t need a filler ‘e’ on the groß– because the necessary declension itself is an ‘e’. We’ll say ‘a big pig’ so that it’s easy to see the slight differences from ‘this big pig.’, nominative: ein junges Schweinaccusative: ein junges Schweindative: einem jungen Schweingenitive: eines jungen Schweines. You might also know that every German noun has a gender attached to it (masculine, feminine, neuter, or plural; listed across the top of the chart). But in German — as you’ve seen — the nouns can be all shuffled around without it changing the sentence’s meaning. They make sense! OK! Well, for starters, you need to know that it’s not very useful to talk about just adjective declensions. [non-ein-word, non-rulebreaker-plural] determiner & adjective → declension pattern #1. TYPE 1: Definite Articles "The nice man / woman / child / children" Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural NOM der nette Mann die … Continue reading → It’s those adjective endings (declensions) that signal the case of the following noun. the nominative & accusative cases are identical. And then, there are additional declensions charts for determiners (which, like the charts for adjectives, also get over-categorized into more sub-groups than necessary). That’s how this all ties together. You’ve got this! If it weren’t for what’s called the German case system, we couldn’t know who or what is the subject doing something, or who/what is being acted upon, etc. And they share the same meaning, too: ‘the kind man gives the sad dog a big bone.’. The ending is -en. Even after seeing this for the 2nd time now, this chart might seem crazy-intense. the dative & genitive declensions are the same you saw above with the masculine! The hard endings are highlighted in yellow, and the “soft” adjective endings are underlined. For starters, we’re going to stick with the same ‘this big …’ from above and use the neuter noun Schwein (pig). I’ve never seen anything else like it, but it works like a charm and I hope it takes over the German-learning world. describing) that noun. That’s nice’, you say … ‘but I thought we were talking about adjectives?’. time, you need to have a handle on 3 things. The big brown dog barked at me. With a definite article, the adjective ending is always soft: For the indefinite and possessive articles, the adjective endings are the same except for the three places where the article has no hard ending and the adjective has to take it on: And with no article ("the taste of hot coffee"), the adjective always takes on the hard ending, except in the three cases where it’s still there on the noun: "The nice man / woman / child / children", "hot coffee / cold milk / fresh bread / warm rolls". Read on! Der-words, ein-words. 100? This is honest-to-goodness-scout’s-honor the ONLY declensions chart you need. Der große braune Hund bellte mich an.The big brown dog barked at me. the declensions for the feminine nominative & accusative are identical). Declension patterns #2 and #4 have limited usage (see graphic above). It makes the most sense to talk about declensions in general, which applies not only to adjectives, but also to determiners (as mentioned above). Weak declensions: just -e or -n, do a lesser job indicating the noun’s gender/case. If the article is ein or eine then the ending is like in Strong declension.

german adjective declension chart

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german adjective declension chart 2020