Each example below has three parts: the original text, a literal gloss describing how every word works, and a natural translation. The glosses use a few shorthand labels so they stay short. Don't worry about memorising them — this is a reference you can come back to. Person and number · 1sg / 2sg / 3sg — first / second / third person singular (I, you, he/she/it) · 1pl / 2pl / 3pl — first / second / third person plural (we, you-all, they) Gender and case · m / f / n — masculine / feminine / neuter · sg / pl — singular / plural · m.sg — combined: masculine singular (and similarly f.pl, n.sg, etc.) · NOM / ACC / GEN / DAT / INS / LOC — grammatical cases (nominative/accusative/genitive/dative/instrumental/locative) — which role the word plays in the sentence Tense and aspect · PRES — present · PRET — preterite (a finished past event) · IMPF — imperfect (an ongoing or habitual past situation) · FUT — future · PERF — perfect (an action completed with present relevance) · PROG — progressive (action in progress, e.g. am eating) · COND — conditional (would…) Mood · IND — indicative (regular statement) · SUBJ — subjunctive (uncertainty, wishes, doubts) · IMP — imperative (commands) · INF — infinitive (dictionary form: to go, to eat) Other · REFL — reflexive (action on oneself: myself, yourself) · PERS — personal a (Spanish only — marks a human direct object) · HON — honorific (extra-polite form, common in Japanese/Korean) · TOP / SUB / OBJ — topic / subject / object markers (Japanese, Korean) · CL — classifier (Chinese, Japanese, Korean — a counter word for nouns) · NEG — negation
German main clauses follow the V2 rule: the conjugated verb is always the second element, no matter what comes first. The subject can sit before or after that verb. In subordinate clauses (introduced by weil, dass, wenn, ob...) the conjugated verb moves to the very end. When a sentence has two verbal parts (modal + infinitive, auxiliary + participle, separable prefix verb), they form a 'bracket': the conjugated verb stays in V2 and the other piece is pushed to the end of the clause. Everything else (objects, time, manner, place) is squeezed inside that bracket.
Every German noun is masculine (der), feminine (die) or neuter (das), and the article must be learned with the word. Endings give strong hints. Masculine: nouns ending in -er, -ling, -ich, -ig, most days, months, seasons, weather words. Feminine: -e (most), -heit, -keit, -ung, -schaft, -ion, -ie, -tät. Neuter: diminutives in -chen and -lein (always), -ment, -um, most words for young creatures, and infinitives used as nouns. The gender controls article, adjective ending and pronoun, so it is structurally central, not decorative.
German marks the role of a noun phrase with four cases. Nominative is the subject (the 'who/what does it'). Accusative is the direct object (what is directly acted on) and is also required by some prepositions (durch, für, gegen, ohne, um). Dative is the indirect object (the recipient, the 'to whom') and is required by aus, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu and by many verbs (helfen, danken, gefallen). Genitive shows possession or relation and follows wegen, trotz, während, statt. Two-way prepositions (in, an, auf, unter...) take accusative for motion-into and dative for static location.
Articles change for gender, number and case. Definite article: Nominative der/die/das/die, Accusative den/die/das/die, Dative dem/der/dem/den (+ noun-n), Genitive des/der/des/der (+ noun-(e)s on masc/neut). Indefinite article ein/eine: Nominative ein/eine/ein, Accusative einen/eine/ein, Dative einem/einer/einem, Genitive eines/einer/eines. There is no plural indefinite (just bare noun, or use 'keine' for none). Possessives (mein, dein, sein, ihr, unser, euer, ihr/Ihr) and 'kein' decline exactly like 'ein' and are called ein-words.
Nominative: ich, du, er/sie/es, wir, ihr, sie/Sie. 'du' is singular informal; 'ihr' is plural informal; 'Sie' (capitalised) is formal singular and plural. The pronoun also changes for case. Accusative: mich, dich, ihn, sie, es, uns, euch, sie/Sie. Dative: mir, dir, ihm, ihr, ihm, uns, euch, ihnen/Ihnen. There is no separate genitive in everyday use; possession is expressed by possessive adjectives (mein, dein, sein, ihr, unser, euer, ihr/Ihr). The third-person pronoun must match the noun's grammatical gender, not biological sex, so a table (der Tisch) is 'er'.
A regular German verb takes the stem (infinitive minus -en) plus the personal ending: -e, -st, -t, -en, -t, -en (ich, du, er/sie/es, wir, ihr, sie/Sie). Verbs whose stems end in -d/-t insert -e- before -st and -t (arbeitest, arbeitet). Many strong verbs change the stem vowel in du/er/sie/es of the present (a → ä, e → i/ie). The four most important irregulars are sein (to be), haben (to have), werden (to become / future + passive) and gehen (to go); their forms must be memorised.
German has only one present tense; it covers English simple present and present continuous. 'Ich lese' means both 'I read' and 'I am reading'. The present is also routinely used for the near future when a time expression makes it clear ('Ich komme morgen' = 'I will come tomorrow'). Strong verbs change the stem vowel in 2nd and 3rd person singular: fahren → du fährst, er fährt; sprechen → du sprichst, er spricht; sehen → du siehst, er sieht. Otherwise endings are perfectly regular: -e, -st, -t, -en, -t, -en.
Spoken German uses the Perfekt for almost all past events: auxiliary haben or sein (present tense) + Partizip II at the end of the clause. Sein is used with verbs of motion or change of state (gehen, fahren, kommen, werden, sterben) and with sein/bleiben itself; haben is used with everything else. The Präteritum (simple past: ich ging, ich machte, ich sah) is the written/literary past and is used in narration; in speech only sein, haben, werden and the modals are normally used in Präteritum (war, hatte, wurde, konnte...).
The Futur I is formed with the conjugated present of werden + infinitive at the end of the clause: ich werde gehen, du wirst gehen, er wird gehen, wir werden gehen, ihr werdet gehen, sie werden gehen. In everyday German, however, this tense is mainly used to express a prediction, a promise, an assumption or strong intention. For ordinary future events Germans simply use the present plus a time word (morgen, nächste Woche). Futur II (werde + Partizip II + haben/sein) expresses something assumed to be finished by a future point.
The six modals are können (can/be able), müssen (must/have to), sollen (be supposed to), wollen (want), dürfen (be allowed to), and mögen (like) / its subjunctive möchte (would like). They are irregular in the present: most show a vowel change in the singular (ich kann, du kannst, er kann; ich muss, du musst, er muss). The modal is conjugated in V2 and the main verb stays as a bare infinitive at the end of the clause, forming the verbal bracket. In subordinate clauses the modal moves to the very end, after the infinitive.
Many German verbs are formed with a stressed prefix (auf-, an-, ab-, aus-, ein-, mit-, vor-, zu-, weg-, zurück-...) that detaches in main clauses. The conjugated stem stays in V2 and the prefix flies to the end of the clause. In the infinitive, in subordinate clauses, and after a modal, the verb is written as one word. The Partizip II is formed by inserting -ge- between the prefix and the stem: aufstehen → aufgestanden, anrufen → angerufen. Unstressed prefixes (be-, ent-, er-, ge-, ver-, zer-) are inseparable and never split.
German has two negators. 'Kein' negates a noun that would otherwise take an indefinite article or no article at all; it declines exactly like 'ein' (kein, keine, keinen, keinem...). 'Nicht' negates everything else: verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, or whole sentences. Position rules for 'nicht': it goes before the element it negates (adjectives, places, manner adverbs) and at the very end of a clause when negating the whole verb or sentence. In a bracket structure it sits just before the second verbal piece at the end.
Yes/no questions are V1: the conjugated verb moves to first position, the subject follows immediately. Wh-questions begin with a question word (wer 'who', was 'what', wo 'where', wohin 'where to', woher 'where from', wann 'when', warum 'why', wie 'how', welcher 'which', wie viel(e) 'how much/many') and then keep the V2 pattern, so the verb stays in second position. 'Wer' declines for case: wer (N), wen (A), wem (D), wessen (G). To ask politely for things one usually adds 'bitte'.
German has no single default plural. The most common patterns are: -e (often with umlaut on masculine: der Tisch → die Tische, der Stuhl → die Stühle); -er (with umlaut where possible, mostly neuters: das Kind → die Kinder, das Buch → die Bücher); -(e)n (most feminines: die Frau → die Frauen, die Blume → die Blumen); -s (loanwords and short words: das Auto → die Autos, das Hotel → die Hotels); no ending but umlaut (some masculines/neuters in -er, -el, -en: der Bruder → die Brüder, der Apfel → die Äpfel). All plurals take the article 'die' in the nominative.
An adjective before a noun must take an ending that signals gender, number and case; only predicate adjectives (after sein, werden, bleiben) stay uninflected: 'Das Haus ist alt'. Two main paradigms exist. Weak declension follows a definite article (der, die, das, dieser...), which already carries the case information, so the adjective takes only -e or -en. Strong declension is used when no article is present and the adjective itself must signal the case; the endings then look like the definite article (kalter Kaffee, gutes Bier, frische Milch). After the indefinite article (mixed declension), the pattern is a blend of the two.