Language/German/Grammar/Conditional-Mood

2020-04-04T14:34:54Z

Woodstock 72: I expanded the article

The conditional tense is called "Konjunktiv II (zwei)" in German. It is used to talk about things that are pure hypothetical. Note that there are to ways to form the conditional tense: the first one is a real verbal form, the second one is perphrastic. "Ich sänge" is the real verbal form: I would sing. "Ich würde singen" is the periphrastic form. There is no difference in meaning. But there can be a difference in style. The simple form belong often rather to formal speech. With some verbs though, the simple form ist quite common. You can see the most common simple forms her. The verbs "sein, werden und haben" have very common conditional forms. Notice that these forms can quite simply be derived from the past tenses of the verbs by adding umlauts: ich war becomes ich wäre and so forth.

[[File:conditional-tense.jpg]]With "spielen" and "essen", the table above shows the perphrastic form: Conditional of "werden" plus infintive of the verb. Notice the simple form, which can again be created by umlauting the past form. "ich spielte" becomes "ich spielte". There is just no umlaut for "ie"! This is a major problem of the simple form. If there is no legal way to umlaut the stem vowel, the form just doesn't change. With "essen" you have the past tense "ich aß". This allows an umlaut and will yield "ich äße". The form is theoretically correct and you can use is. But be warned: Unless you are Goethe or you are writing a formal essay, you will either get misunderstanding or laughter. The form is not really used. Instead, we say "Ich würde essen".

Things are never simple in German. In writing, a sentence this to many "würde" sounds clumsy. So use "würde" with care. As a rule of thumb, use the simple forms for "sein, haben, werden" and the periphrastic form for all the rest.

We are have a conditional form of the past. Take the compound past form and put the auxilliary in the conditional. "Ich habe gegessen" becomes "ich hätte gegessen", "Ich war gewesen" becomes "ich wäre gewesen". If you feel extremely confident about your German, try to figure out some passive forms: "ich bin gefragt worden" becomes "ich wäre gefragt worden" and so on.

Language/German/Grammar/Gender

2020-04-02T13:02:49Z

Woodstock 72: I expanded the article and added some rules.

In German nouns are either masculine (male, männlich in German), feminine (female, weiblich in German) or neuter (things/entities without a natural gender like book, sun or moon, sächlich in German). The grammatical gender is not always identical with the natural gender of a noun in German. Be careful: the grammatical gender of a noun in your native language can be different from the grammatical gender of the noun in German.

Examples:

*''das Mädchen neuter - girl''

Girls are female, the natural gender of a girl is female, but the grammatical gender of "Mädchen" in German is neuter.

*''die Sonne in German is feminine - the sun in English is masculine''

*''der Mond in German is masculine - the moon in English is feminine''

Why is it so important to know the grammatical gender of a noun in German? In German you often have to use an article with the noun. The articles for the three types of gender and the different cases are not the same. To use the correct article you have to know the grammatical gender.

==Example for definite (''der, die, das'') and indefinite (''ein, eine'') articles in German==

===Singular===
(man - ''Mann'', woman - ''Frau'', girl - ''Mädchen'')
{| class="wikitable"
!Case
!masculine
!feminine
!neuter
|-
|Nominativ
|der / ein Mann
|die / eine Frau
|das / ein Mädchen
|-
|Genitiv
|des / eines Mannes
|der / einer Frau
|des / eines Mädchens
|-
|Dativ
|dem / einem Mann
|der / einer Frau
|dem / einem Mädchen
|-
|Akkusativ
|den / einen Mann
|die / eine Frau
|das /ein Mädchen
|}

Pronouns that replace nouns are different for gender and cases, too. So you have to know the grammatical gender to use the correct pronoun in German sentences.

Example:

The man is talking to his child. He wears a black shirt.

*'''''Der Mann''' spricht mit '''seinem''' Kind. '''Er''' trägt ein schwarzes Shirt.''

For nouns that describe a profession you are able to "transform" the grammatical gender from masculine to feminine in German. Similar to the transformation of the noun ''actor'' as the expression for a male actor to the noun ''actress'' as the expression for a female actor in English.

*der Schauspieler (actor) -> die Schauspieler'''in''' (actress)

*der Doktor (doctor) -> die Doktor'''in'''

*der Fahrer (driver) -> die Fahrer'''in'''

To determine the grammatical gender of a noun is not easy. Basically, you just have to memorize it. '''But''' there are some rules that can help a lot:
* Most nouns ending in -e are feminine: die Straße, die Soße, die Pfanne. It's not a 100-percent rule, there are exceptions: der Hase
* All nouns ending in -tion are feminine. 100 percent. Trust me: die Revolution, die Evolution, die Partizipation
* All nouns ending in -heit or -keit are feminine. No exceptions: die Schönheit, die Traurigkeit, die Lustlosigkeit
* All nouns ending in -tum are neutral: das Christentum, das Judentum, das Eigentum
* Most nouns ending in -nis are feminine: die Finsternis, die Kenntnis, die Erkenntnis, but das Hindernis which is at the moment the only exception that I can figure out, but there may be more
* Most names of trees are feminine: die Eiche, die Birke, die Pappel, die Fichte, die Tanne, die Weide, die Buche but there are exceptions: der Ahorn, der Weißdorn

If you are a native French speaker, be careful. Even if the word sounds familiar or even if it is a French loanword the gender can be surprising. Consider these:
* le bastion = die Bastion
* un uniforme = eine Uniform
* l'urine = der Urin
* le front = die Front
* le parti = die Partei
* le blasphème = die Blasphemie

You could make the list much longer, so be warned. But using the wrong article has generally not consequences for being understood. So relax. You might also find it useful to think about the fact that in some German dialects the articles are only slightly different. And also Germans do struggle. In the Odenwald region (close to Heidelberg) many people will say die Bach. In Standard German this in an ugly fault: You must say der Bach. So if you are struggling too, you may be in good company.

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Language/German/Grammar/Conditional-Mood

Language/German/Grammar/Gender