German Grammar Overview

Hallo! Guten Tag!

We have covered greetings and few basic questions, counting and alphabet. These are very basic things. Kindergarten level. [And by the way, Kindergarten is a German word. Kinder means children and Garten means garden.]
But as we move to higher class, Grammar is introduced. German, I believe, is pretty strict in terms of grammar. During school time, I used to think that German is similar to Mathematics in terms of scoring marks. In Mathematics, there is only one correct answer, like ways, in German there used to be only one correct answer. There are various rules in Mathematics. In German too, there are various rules.
Anyway, coming back to German Grammar. Following are certain points that will be covered in greater details later on:

• Articles: In German, every noun has an article associated with it. These are:
• Maskuline: der Vater (the father)
• Feminine: die Mutter (the mother)
• Neutral: das Kind (the child)
• Plural: die Kinder (the children) [Luckily all the plurals have article: die]
• Capitalization: Following are the rules for capitalization:
• First letter of first word in a sentence is capitalized. This is similar to English. For example, T (of this) in the previous sentence is capitalized.
• Each and every noun in capitalized irrespective of its position in a sentence. This rule is not similar to English. For example: Ich liebe meine Familie. I of ich is capitalized because it is the first letter of first word in this sentence, while F of Familie is capitalized because it is a noun.
• Names are capitalized. Ich heisse Shruti Aggarwal.
• Adjectives, pronouns (except Sie - politer way of addressing), verbs, prepositions and articles are not capitalized until they are not the first word in the sentence.
• The more you'll read, the more you'll observe this. So keep reading!
• Cases: The position of the noun in a sentence determines its case. There are basically four cases:
• Nominative Case: Subject + Verb
• Subject of a sentence has the nominative case.
• Subject is naturally the center of attraction in a sentence. It is the thing we talk about in a sentence.
• Verb is conjugated according to the subject of the sentence.
• For example: Ich schreibe. Ich is the subject. Schreiben is the verb.
• Accusative Case: Subject + Verb + Direct Object
• The above sentence: Ich schreibe. is very vague. It doesn't tell what exactly do I write?
• So if I modify it to: Ich screibe ein Buch., besides giving completeness to the sentence, it has given the sentence an accusative object.
• Dative Case: There are two possibilities for Dative case:
• Subject + Verb + Indirect Object + Direct Object
• Subject + Dative Verb + Indirect Object
• The indirect object is basically the beneficiary object. When I say: Ich schreibe meinem Freund ein Buch. or Ich helfe meinem Freund., so my friend is the dative object here because he/she is the beneficiary object.
• Genitive Case: Possessive Case
• If we have to relate this in English, then the noun that gets associated with 's or of takes the genitive case.
• For example, in my friend's husband, friend takes the genitive case.
• My friend's husband can also be written as: husband of my friend. So again, friend takes the genitive case.
• Verb Conjugation: In German, verbs are conjugated according to the subject of the sentence. The subject can be anything. I can be the subject or you can be a subject too. Or anything else for that matter. So depending on the subject, verb is conjugated differently. Luckily in English, if we have to conjugate a verb: to come, it would be as follows:
1. I come                          we come
2. you come                     you all come
3. he/she/it comes        they come
4. So it is pretty simple, right? But in German, if we have to conjugate a verb: kommen, which means to come, then it would be as follows:
5. ich komme                wir kommen  [English translation: point 1]
6. du kommst                ihr kommt      [English translation: point 2] du -> informal you
7. er/sie/es kommt       sie kommen   [English translation: point 3]
8. Sie kommen               Sie kommen   [Sie -> formal you/you all]

It is very important to memorize articles associated with every noun, reason being that based on the noun's case, article changes. Of course, there are rules for that, but if one doesn't know the article associated with that noun, then he/she won't be able to apply that rule.

With the above mentioned points, there are other things too, like prepositions, pronouns, etc. And there is a lot more than what's stated above for each point. But don't worry! All of this will be covered in subsequent posts.

Auf Wiedersehen!