German grammar

German grammar is the set of structural rules of the German language, which in many respects is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages. German grammar is the set of structural rules of the German language, which in many respects is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages. Although some features of German grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of English in that it has, among other things, cases and gender in nouns and a strict verb-second word order in main clauses. German has retained many of the grammatical distinctions that other Germanic languages have lost in whole or in part. There are three genders and four cases, and verbs are conjugated for person and number. Accordingly, German has more inflections than English, and uses more suffixes. For example, in comparison to the -s added to third-person singular present-tense verbs in English, most German verbs employ four different suffixes for the conjugation of present-tense verbs, namely -e for the first-person singular, -st for the second-person singular, -t for the third-person singular and for the second-person plural, and -en for the first- and third-person plural. Owing to the gender and case distinctions, the articles have more possible forms. In addition, some prepositions combine with some of the articles. Numerals are similar to other Germanic languages. Unlike English, Swedish and Norwegian, units are placed before tens as in Danish, Dutch and Frisian. A German noun – excluding pluralia tantum – has one of three specific grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter). Nouns are declined for case and grammatical number (singular, plural). In German, all nouns are capitalized, not just proper nouns. German has all three genders of late Proto-Indo-European—the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter. Most German nouns are of one of these genders. Nouns denoting a person, such as die Frau ('woman') or der Mann ('man'), generally agree with the natural gender of what is described. However, since the diminutive forms ending in -chen or -lein are grammatically neuter, there exist several notable counterexamples such as das Mädchen ('girl') and das Fräulein ('miss'). Thus these are not illogical, whereas das Weib (old, regional or anthropological: woman; a cognate of the English 'wife') is really an exception. Furthermore, in German, the gender of nouns without natural gender is not predictable. For example, the three common pieces of cutlery all have different genders: das Messer ('knife') is neuter, die Gabel ('fork') is feminine, and der Löffel ('spoon') is masculine. Students of German are often advised to learn German nouns with their accompanying definite article, as the definite article of a German noun corresponds to the gender of the noun. However, the meaning or form, especially the ending, of a noun can be used to recognize 80% of noun genders. For instance, nouns ending in the suffixes -heit, -keit, -ung, -tät, or -schaft are always feminine. Nouns ending in -ich, -ig, or -ing are nearly always masculine. As noted above, nouns ending in -chen or -lein are neuter. Many nouns starting with Ge- and ending in -e, as well as many nouns ending in -nis, -tum, or -sal, also are neuter. A noun ending in -e is likely to be feminine; it is masculine when it denotes people or a few animals: die Katze ('cat'), die Blume ('flower'), and die Liebe ('love') are feminine, while der Bote ('messenger'), der Junge ('boy') and der Knabe ('knave') are masculine. A few nouns ending in -e are neuter, like das Ende ('end'). Similarly, a noun ending in -er is likely to be masculine (der Teller, der Stecker, der Computer); however, das Messer ('knife') and das Wasser ('water') are neuter, whereas die Mutter ('mother') and die Butter ('butter') are feminine. The German language has several different ways of forming the plural. Many feminine nouns are regular but many masculine and neuter nouns are not. For example, some plurals are formed with an 'n' or 'en', some with an umlaut and an 'e', other plurals are the same as the singular, and some add 'er' or an umlaut and 'er'. Many loanwords as well as some dialectal or colloquial nouns, take a plural in 's' (e.g. das Restaurant → die Restaurants). Some foreign endings, such as Latin -um, are deleted before the plural ending (e.g. das Zentrum → die Zentren). Sometimes the stress in the plural form is changed (e.g. der Muslim → die Muslime).