Grammar Jargon What the heck are cases

Hello everyone,
and welcome to a new rendition of Grammar Jargon. Do you know
Bambi?
It is a beautiful morning. Bambi, the cute little roe deer feels great
and decides to venture into an unknown part of the woods. And although
the sheer dimension of the unknown is a bit intimidating, Bambi is
looking forward to discovering it step by step kind of like a person who
decides to learn a new language
Soon our little hero comes to a glade a beautiful glade flowers of all
kind and colors, small bushes with juicy green leaves, a small creek and
butterflies galore (think Disney). Bambi is fascinated. It must be so
much fun to graze there. but then suddenly, it changes (score
turning to minor) Grey clouds cover the sun within seconds, a flash
strikes the only tree on the clearing, leaving but a burning stump,
thunder roars, the earth opens up, smoke, flames and amidst all this
chaos THEY are dancing and chanting their villain song disheartened
and sad Bambi returns home the new part of the forest, the new
language has
cases. dun dun duuunnnnn
Cases do have a really bad reputation. Especially to people whos
mother tongue is virtually case-free, has cases sounds like has fleas
or doesnt shower very often. But even people whos own language
does have cases dont like them too much. Finns complain about the
German cases, Germans whine about Polish cases and everybody
bitches about ancient Greek and Latin. Cases just seem to give everyone
a hard time.
Partially this is because people do not realize what cases are they are
there and they suck like speed-bumps. Knowing about the background
of cases will definitely help to understand them.
So in this article we will look at the general concept of cases, without
talking too much about a specific one. We will look at what cases do and
how they do it and we will have a look at the variety of cases you can
find in different languages. Then, we will see if we can make a case
(just warming up the pun-gun) for or against cases and answer the
very very legit and frequent question.
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Are case really necessary?

And to wrap up we will take a look at how cases connect organic
chemistry. Sounds good? Cool. Then lets start.
What cases are
I sense that some of you are still a little bit tense. Trust me, there is
absolutely no need to be scared cases can be your friend. Dont think
so? Well, there are many useful cases around us everyday
for example: beer cases. They contain up to 24 bottles of beer.24
bottles in one easy to carry case. That is actually really convenient. Or if
youre not into beer that much think of wine cases, or suitcases, or
briefcases.
Now all these cases do have something in common they contain stuff.
And this is exactly what the grammatical cases do they contain
information.
Lets look at verbs for a second. The verb to go can come in quite
different looks.

I go home.
I went home.

Go and went dont share a letter. And yet they are the very same
action, even the very same verb. Looking up went in a dictionary will
give you a reference to to go. Verbs have different dresses for different
situations and all these dresses convey some information. Went tells
you, that it is in the past. If you dress up a verb for its task, we call
that to conjugate (read more that here). In some languages like French
for instance, the verbs have a huge ass closet with a dress for nearly
every language situation possible. English verbs on the contrary only
have 5 dresses. go goes went gone going thats all there
is. You cannot convey much different information with only 5 dresses.
English verbs compensate for this lack of forms by being extremely
social. When English verbs have to express something in conditionalpast-progressive, they just call 2 of their friend and do the job together.

If Steve hadnt been missing, the project couldhave been

finished in time.
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In other language hadnt been missing might be just one weird form
of to miss something likemisseriatait
(Disclaimer: Example inspired by French, but may be exaggerated. Does
not reflect real French grammar)
Why I am talking about conjugating when this is about cases? Well,
because it is actually the same idea. Changing a basic word in order to
add more information to it is what linguists call to inflect. If you inflect
a verb, it is called conjugating. If you inflect other things, it is called to
decline
And putting something into a case is one form of declension. Another
form of declension is adding an sfor plural. Lets take the word tree.
This is the basic word. Now I add an s to it, I inflect or more
preciselydecline it trees with the effect that it has more
information now it is plural.
Anyway using cases is essentially the same as conjugating verbs. You
alter the word to give more information to it.
How grammatical cases work
Cases are sort of the conjugation of things and persons. Now how are
cases applied?
First thing important is that it is not the thing or person that is put into
the case but the speech representation. sounds obvious but lets take
a closer look at this representation because it can have quite different
shapes. Lets meet Marc. Marc is Claires boyfriend and he has long
blond hair. We can speak about Marc in different ways:

Marc is hungry.
Claires boyfriend is hungry.
The blond guy who is with Claire is hungry.
He is hungry.

And one more example lets take a chair.

The chair is brown.

It is brown.
This chair is brown.
The brown one is broken.

Those are not ALL ways to refer to chair in a sentence but you can see
that it is not necessarily the word chair or the name Marc, that makes
the reference.
Now if we put a thing or a person into a case, we will alter the speech
representation of that thing or person. But this representation can be
more than one word.

The blond tall pizza eating, coke drinking guy gets a call.

The guy is represented by the whole block here and not just by the
word guy so when we have to put that certain guy in a case, we need
to look at the whole representation the blond tall pizza eating,
coke drinking guy.
With that said, we can move on to the different possibilities or looks a
case can have. Because depending on case and language there are quite
a few possibilities for the mechanics of cases the only thing common
is that something is changed. But the change itself can have different
shape. You can change the beginning or the end of the word or you can
change something in the middle of the word. Maybe you just have to
change the noun or name (like chair or Marc) , maybe you just have to
change the whole noun phrase including all articles and adjectives and
in some languages, for example in German, the change might only affect
the articles and adjectives while the actual noun remains unchanged.
Now all that is pretty theoretical so lets imagine a fictive case in English:
1) the with-ative the withative indicates that the thing or person is
connected in sense of with (youll understand once you see the
examples)
Putting something into withative is done by adding -con to the word
that needs to be changed.
2) the some-ative the someative indicates that you are talking
about some of that thing.
Putting something into someative is done by adding -so to the word.
And now we are ready to speak.

I write my black pencon.

I write with my black pen.

Now this is only one possibility. Suppose, our language declines (puts the
case) to EVERY word of the representation. Then we would say:

I write mycon blackcon pencon.

This means the very same as the first example it has just a different
grammar. And just for completion here is the same in a German like
structure.

I write mycon blackcon pen.

Here only articles and adjectives are altered while the actual noun
remains unchanged quite confusing I have to admit.
For the other examples I will stick with the change all grammar. But
remember it varies from language to language and there is no right or
wrong there. It is just different.

Marc
Marc
Marc
Marc

goes
goes
goes
goes

Clairecon to the movies.

with Claire to the movies.
hiscon girflfriendcon to the movies
with his girlfriend to the movies.

And what if the thing or person is only represented by one pronoun? Well
it has to change of course

I have a new colleague but I hate working himcon.

I have a new colleague but I hate working with him.
My girlfriend is angry mecon.
My girlfriend is angry with me.

I think you are starting to get the hang of it. So far we have only used
the rather easy to grasp Withative now lets take a quick look at the
Someative.. which does actually exist of sorts in Finnish, where it is
called Partitive.

Do you have moneyso left.

Do you have some money left.
I need coldso waterso.
I need some cold water.
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The latter one in German case mechanics would be:

I need coldso water.

So not that difficult so far. Now lets see both cases back to back. I will
not give translations anymore I am sure you understand it without
them.

I want my coffee milkcon.

Can I have milkso for my coffee?

And now something really crazy

I want my coffee with some warm milk.

There are many languages like Finnish or Turkish that allow to add
several endings together so the sentence in our fictional English would
be

I want my coffee warmsocon milksocon.

And just to stress it again this system I used here is one possibility of
case mechanics. How putting something in a case works in a specific
language depends on the language.
Not all cases just replace prepositions like our fictional Withative.
Some cases like the German Dative can be really blurry and hard to
grasp. But more on that later. First lets look at English.
Cases in English
I think that many natives of English when confronted with case
languages like German, Finnish or Turkish perceive English to be free of
that mess indeed, English has come a long way and has successfully
left behind a large part of its Germanic and Latin case heritage. The still
very present in the personal pronouns.

This is Marie. She is hungry.

I give her something to eat.

Both words, she and her, refer to the very same person so why are
they different? Because her is sheput in a case her is she dressed up
as object a grammatical object of course :).

Who is that?
Whose is that?

This is another occasion of case in English. Whose is the question word

who put in a case the possessive case. If English completely devoid of
all cases the question would be:

Of who is that?

The possessive case is actually still pretty well preserved in English. His,
hers, yours, ours, Marcs, Thomas the s marks possession here. We
have inflected (altered) the original word, thus adding more information
to it. This is what cases are good for. Anyway while it hasnt
completely vanished yet, the case concept doesnt play a very important
role in English, especially compared to languages like Finnish with their
15 yeah 15 cases. English things and persons are just like the English
verbs very social and like to hang out with prepositions to express the
little extra something. Here is a comparison between English and
Finnish:

I am from Berlin.
Min olen Berliinist.

It means the very same. Finnish just uses a different approach to say it.
Instead if adding an extraword, they modify the origin.
Cases all around the world
First of, I want to say that EVERY language can be considered to have
one case the default case. It is wrong to think that German has 4 its
actually just 3, because one is the default which you would have to use
anyway. You cannot NOT use any case. Case 1 is the basic form, and this
one exists in any language.
Cases are not something rare or weird and there are many large
languages like Russian, German, Turkish or Hindi and many others that
have cases. Also English used to have cases but they disappeared over
time in favor of prepositions.
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But do people from India find it easy to learn German? I mean they have
cases too so they it shouldnt be such a pain for them well, there are
many MANY possibilities for cases. Cases contain additional
information. Now how many information is there that could possibly be
given? Exactly endless. You can assign a case to the information
rotten and to pick a different mechanic, lets say the case works by
replacing the first vowel of the word by ew.

I have rotten eggs in my fridge.

I have ewggs in my fridge.
Shit, I just put rotten milk in my coffee.
Shit, I put mewlk in my coffee.
The movie got 87 % average on Rottentomatoes.com.
The movie got 87 % average on Tewmatoes.com.

Ok that last one is kind of an insider maybe :).Anyway Anything is

possible and can be expressed using cases. Hindi and German have
about the same number of cases but the concepts expressed are
TOTALLY different. So for a person from India it is just as difficult to make
the distinction between Dative and Accusative as it is for a native
English speaker. Even for people from languages that have
approximately the same cases, it can be tricky due to different
mechanics. As I said before some languages might apply the inflection
(the alteration of the word) to the main noun only, others might put it to
EVERY SINGLE WORD of the whole block that represents a person or a
thing and then there are weirdos like German where the main changes
are done to the articles and adjectives while the noun remains
untouched for the most part. So cases are a widely used concept, but
it is just a concept, and the ways to interpret it are virtually endless. If
you read up on cases you can find so many different names like
Vokative, Accusative, Locative, Essessive and many many more the
examples we had, the Withative and the Someative are actually not that
far fetched.
Some cases,like the ones we made up here, are rather easy to grasp
others, like the German Dative or the Vokative are harder to rephrase
with a mere preposition. I actually found the Finnish system very easy,
as they concept behind a case is very clear cut. So if a language has
many cases does not automatically mean that it is more difficult. You can
have a language that has just 2 cases. But the distinction between those
2 may be soooo difficult that you feel like you never get it right.
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Most languages have a rather low number of cases, there are also
examples where they went all out on that like Tsez (here is a Wikipedia
article), I just say 128. The German 3 cases are really not that many in
comparison to that extravaganza.
Still.. the German cases are a headache for many many people, so the
following question has been circling many peoples minds.
Are cases really necessary
The answer is a clear NO! You can express anything a case expresses by
talking around it. You may find a weird case in some language only a few
thousand people speak, that you find really difficult to comprehend and
express in your mother tongue. But that is not so much about the
language, it is about the word view. People might express some
information in a case, that you just do not care about at all. I mean,
some languages like again Finnish get along without a distinction
between he and she so ANYTHING is possible in language.
Anyway cases are not necessary. There are 2 main ways to replace
them. The first one are prepositions. This way works extremely well for
cases that express information about time or place.
The second way is word order. If you have a fixed word order like in
English, you need no case.

My sister gives my nephew my brother.

This is a stupid sentence but it is clear who is giving what to whom by

the way whom is just another case leftover in English.
Anyway if I change the order of the sentence above, the meaning
changes.

My brother gives my sister my nephew.

So here the word order does carry information about the thing or person.
If this information is carried otherwise, for instance through cases, word
order is not important anymore and can thus be changed. German is
more flexible than English when it comes to word order. But it is not
better it is just different.
Generally there seems to be a trend to that analytic approach. English
has dropped the old Indo-European cases in favor of prepositions
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and one German case, the Genitive, is losing some of its every day
usage to a preposition. People say

Das Buch von meinem Professor

and the Genitive version of that would sound super stilted.

Meines Professors Buch

The Genitive is not disappearing (I did say that in an earlier edition of

the post and that was a bit too general a statement, but hey this post
is almost 3 years old and I learned something new in the meantime). But
the use is changing and its one example a preposition takes over the
role of a case in German.
However, prepositions are not the end. Right now people say to me in
English. But this is longer than it needs to be and it is not totally
unrealistic that people start to shorten it to something like tme. This
already started I mean the phonetic transcript of someone speaking
at a high pace saying to me is really something like timmy.. so
tme is used as if it were one word and then at some point people start
to write just tme and then, another 200 years later, it is established
as a form of I there is I me tme my mine and he him
tim his. a new case is born, a case that expresses a direction
towards the thing. It is a closed circle, and you really cant answer what
has been there first or what is better. It is just different. And the last
thing I want to say is this:
Imagine you are a beginner in a language. What difference does it make,
how something is written.What you hear is a stream of sounds. The
combination tome expresses something. Write it as 2 words, you have
a preposition. write it as one word you have a case. But essentially it is
sound used to convey information. so there is not that big of a
difference.
So this was a round up on cases. Cases add additional information to
the thing or person and they do that by altering words which
information they transport and how they alter which words is entirely
dependent on the specific language you study. You can have a language
without them, just as well as you can express the least important bit
using a case. It is just a question of what you are used to.

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So we are almost done, but I did promise you to shine some light on
the connections between cases and organic chemistry
What cases have to do with organic chemistry
Pretty much nothing.
I hope all this helped you to understand the background of cases and
why they are how they are. And dont worry I will talk about the
German cases in detail :)
If you have any questions or suggestions just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
German Sentence Structure 1 The Box Model
Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German is Easy Learn German Online while reading
titles that span over one line Course ( get it? one line is almost
spelled like online that was a joke by the way) .
Today, after a long looooong wait, it is time for the first part of the mini
series series on German sentence structure. Wohooooo.
And to do the matter justice this mini series will be a loosely connected
compendium of impressionistic essays, poems, songs and one or 2
Haikus inspired by the topic. whats that? Oh, you want like some
rules? But why would you want rules? Can a rule help us understand the
erratic path of a butterfly? Can a rule ever completely capture and
produce the beautiful sound of small stream as it purls over mossy
rocks? And arent there exceptions where there are rules just as there is
fir ok Ill stop that my whole point is: rules wont cut it. It is not like
you can put anything anywhere. When it comes to verbs there are some
iron clad rules and in books you can find other rules too, like,
say, indirect object direct object or time-manner-place. so
whats up with those? Well, try to see them more as a non-binding
advice just like the traffic lights here in Berl wait, is that actually
right?
In either case, German sentence structure and word order is a complex
thing that needs a lot of gut feeling so well learn some rules in this
mini series but also some more general ideas or characteristics that will

11

help you determine which word can go where and why.

And to start this all of we will have a look at what I call:
The Box Model
The box model is a way of looking at language or a sentence in
particular that helps you understand how those many many many many
words are organized. It holds for many languages but for German it is
particularly useful so lets dive right into it.
Breaking down a sentence
Lets analyze a sentence and see what parts we can identify there
Probably the most important and defining part of a sentence is the
verb. Pretty much every sentence has one. Without a verb, a sentence is
just a scenery, a set stage without anything happening.

I coffee in the kitchen.

Here, the verb is missing and it is pretty boring.

The verb is so important because it represents what is happening, be it
in our mind or the real world. Stuff happening, an action, is actually the
main reason we talk. I think if there wasnt ever anything going on we
wouldnt say very much. But luckily stuff happens all around us and
verbs are the words for that. Theoretically, a language without verbs is
possible.

I cup on the table.

However, the reality is full of action and flow and this non-verb-language
just doesnt do that justice at all and I actually dont think there is a
language that doesnt have the concept of verbs. If you know of one, let
me know.
German is especially verb-focused by the way, verbs govern everything
in German but we will get to that later on.
So a sentence will always have a verb. Now what about this?

Thomas has been reading

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There are 3 words in there that are all verbs but there is only one thing
going on: reading. So to avoid confusion lets
call reading an action and modify the claim of before every sentence
has an actionwhich is represented by one or more verbs.
Now, in physics they say no movement without mass which sound
an awful lot like a completely unrelated phenomenon called much mass
without movement luckily we wont have to deal with that until beach
season anyway, no mass without movement (or momentum) can be
applied to language too. So far we have an action which in an abstract
sense can be seen as movement. Now we need something that is
moving or that has the momentum and this something is called the
subject. Is the subject as important as the verb? No. There are many
languages that do fine without having asubject in every sentence.
Italian for instance. They just say

Rains.
It rains.

instead of

And what is this it after all? Can you show me it? Describe it? In German
and English we just have to say it because grammar compels us to have
a subject in our sentence. In every sentence? Yes, absolutely safe for
the exceptions :).
So our 2 basic constitti contesttua uh our 2 basic parts of a
sentence are an action and the one doing this action, the subject.
Every sentence in German will contain those 2 things. For your
convenience those parts are marked with colors in the following fictional
example.

Ich lese abends oft in der Kche ein Buch ber Pferde.
In the evenings, I often read a book about horses.

Sowhats with all the other stuff?

Besides the mandatory subject and action, we can put additional
pieces of information into our sentence. It can be information about time
or place or manner or circumstances or duration and so on
Depending on the action there is information you must add, you may
add and you cant add.

I slept.
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This doesnt require me to say more. I can add time-information or place

information or others if I feel like it.

Last night, I slept.

Last night, I slept in my bed.

Here is an example for something you cant add.

I slept my book. is nonsense.

For other verbs, this very information is a mustache oh I mean must

have.

I give.

This doesnt feel complete yet so here we need to add 2 pieces of info.

I give you a book.

All right now each piece of information is BY NATURE the answer to one
specific question. Those can be obvious questions
like when or where but also really specific ones like despite what
fact? Actually the way the parts look in a sentence is exactly the way
you would answer the respective direct question. Behold

I gave.
What?
A kiss
To whom?
My girlfriend
When?
Yesterday morning

I can take all those answers and just use them to build a sentence like
Lego.

Yesterday morning, I gave my girlfriend a chocolate bar.

Now all these pieces of information were very short. But it works for
long ones just the same way.

I fell asleep.
When?
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While learning German.

Where?
In that my new kick ass comfy armchair.
Why?
Because I was tremendously tired from a long days work.
And again, I can just take the answer to the question and put it into my
initial sentence.

While learning German I fell asleep in my kick ass comfy new

armchair because I was tremendously tired from a long days work.

I did NOT change the word order or anything I just stuck it in there
without much thought. Whats that, you ask? Oh no, I dont know if
thats what he said, sorry.
Anyway, lets do it again with an even longer . piece of information
my god, is it just me or has the quality been going dow uhm
decreasing anyway, back to the example.

I slept.
When?
During the second half of the lecture that introduced the German
case system to us and that was by far the most boring lecture I
have seen so far in my entire career as a student.

And just as before you can just use the answer to build a whole sentence

During the second. as a student, I slept.

I slept during the second. as a student.

Now, that during-chunk is a pretty elaborate answer giving all kinds of

background information about the lecture and myself. Does this really
qualify as one piece of information answering only one question as I
claimed before? Yes. Sure, it is also implicitly
answering where and why I slept but those are nothing but
assumptions. Maybe I was at home and slept while my friend was in that
very lecture, which I then saw later on Youtube (hence my judgment)
and my sleeping at the time had nothing to do with the lecture. We
cannot know where I slept or why for fact. The way the whole chunk is
phrased or more precisely the introductory word during makes it a valid
answer to when and only to when? notwhere, not even how long?
And that is what matters this whole massive block is one time
information stuffed with additional things that do not concern the main
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action (sleeping) explicitly. We could replace the whole thing with at

that time not just a part but everything together.

I slep at that time.

We cannot just replace parts of the sentence with at that time.

I slept at that time that was by far the most boring.

I slept at that time that introduced the German.
I slept at that time I have seen in my entire.

It doesnt really work. From the perspective of the main action (sleeping)
the whole during-chunk is one unbreakable unit and all the information
therein is second level info that is not directly connected to the main
sentence. it is like a box labeled with when?.
The box model
What we have discovered so far is that a sentence can be seen as being
comprised of one or more verbs representing one action and a bunch of
boxes that each contain the answer to one question that could be asked
about that action. Even the subject of the sentence is such a box. A box
labeled who?.
Those boxes can contain all kinds of things. So far we have seen boxes
containing just words

Last night I slept.

or a dependent sentence

I slept because I was tired.

but it can also contain other constructions like ing-things or to-things.

Doing my homework I fell asleep.

I tried to call you.

The to call you-part is a box answering to what?. Grammatically it has

the very same function assalmon would have

I tried salmon.
16

Dont believe me? Well, the following sentence could be a replacement

for either example.

I tried it.

Note that is not so important to know what the box is answering to but
rather where it ends. Lets analyze 2 sentences using the box model.
please ignore my inconsistent use of colors.

Last night, I slept in my chair because I was tremendously tired.

[When?], [who?] action [where?][why?]
Yesterday morning, for reasons I dont want to discuss in
detail, I gave my brother a book although I would have needed it.
[When], [why] [who] action [whom?][what?][despite what fact?]
A few days ago I was planning on going to the gym because I had
realized that I had gained weight.
[When], [who] action [planning on what] [why].

Anything inside those sentence except for the action-words themselves

is part of some box. In the second example, the whom-box is not
just brother but my brother and the despite-box is also the whole
thing.
Now you might be like oh great, now I have to worry about identifying
boxes, how does that help me?
Well the box metaphor has 3 main advantages. Firstly a box is solid
and so are the units in the sentence. You can only move or replace them
as a whole chunk and you cannot split them with parts of other boxes.

Yesterday evening, Jims girlfriend made him an incredibly tasty

vegetable dish because he was very hungry.

I cannot say

Yesterday evening Jims girlfriend made him an incredibly

tasty because he was very hungry vegetable dish.

I have broken a box with another box and that is not possible never!
The second reason why box is a good metaphor is that we can close it.
You can carry boxes for a friend who is moving to a new flat without
knowing whats inside.
This is important because the content of a box will NEVER affect the
17

order of other boxes in the sentence let alone the words in those boxes.
Whether there is one word in the box or a whole paragraph with a whole
lot of second and third level info doesnt matter from the perspective of
the main sentence.

I am going to eat a pasta dish in the kitchen now.

I am going to eat a pasta dish in the kitchen after having finished
watching the romantic comedy that my friend who works at this
movie -company recommended to me despite her knowing that
romantic comedies are not exactly my favorite genre.

The main sentence, the main action is that I am going to eat. All the
stuff in the when-box is second level info. We could have just said after
the movie and the listener would still know when I am going to eat. But I
decided to squeeze more info in there I mean why not. However, if my
main message had been the stuff about the comedy I would have
phrased things differently, probably without the whole eating part. The
main sentence is

I am going to eat [when?].

and the exact content of the when-box is of no grammatical

consequence to it. So box-content doesnt really matter grammatically.
The third reason for thinking of boxes is that you can use them to move
lots of stuff easily and conveniently. In our example the time information
is the last info but we could also put it in the beginning.

I am going to eat a pasta dish in the kitchen now.

Now I am going to eat a pasta dish in the kitchen.

Well, that was easy. We just moved one word. But what about the other
example? There are a lot of words to move. The good news is well just
close the box, move it and then reopen it. We dont have to touch a
single word inside. We just move the whole chunk.

After having finished watching. favorite genre, I am going to eat

a pasta dish in the kitchen.

So to sum it all up

Boxes contain information that answers exactly one question of

interest for the main action.
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It depends on the main action which boxes can be there, which

must be there and which ones dont make sense.
A box cannot be split up.
Boxes can contain a single word or several layered minor
sentences. All additional information inside a box about other stuff
in the same box has NOTHING to do grammatically with the main
action. The main sentence doesnt care what exactly is in a box.
Boxes can be moved as a whole. You dont have to touch anything
inside. Just move the whole thing.

Now, no model is ever perfect except for Heidi Klum of course ( I am

kidding) so when it comes to certain adverbs and especially the
German particles it kind of doesnt apply the thing is that you cannot
ask for particles. There is no question to which schon could be a valid
answer. So I suggest we just look at particles as part of the action so
they are not part of a box.
All this is pretty universal I think I am not sure though. But it definitely
does apply to German and it is tremendously helpful to understanding
complex sentences or changing the order of things in a sentence and
boy oh boy I tell you German is REALLY flexible right there like has
been taking Yoga lessons for centuries. Whats that you say? English is
flexible too? Well

To you I say

If you think having the indirect object first is crazy well Germans do
that for breakfast :). I will use the last part of this to show you the full
scope of:
German Sentence Structure Madness
What youre about to see might scare you. Meet a moderately complex
sentence its name is Frederick* (*name changed for privacy reasons)

Obwohl Thomas seit ein paar Tagen eine schlimme Erkltung hat,
war er gestern mit einer Freundin, die er aus der Schule kennt,
schwimmen.
Although he has had a bad cold for a few days now, Thomas went
swimming with a friend whom he knows from school yesterday.

First lets break this down into parts

19

[despite what fact]

action part 1
[who] [when]
whom] action left overs.
[Despite what fact] [who] action [with whom] [when].

[with

Now, here are a few German options that also work just a different
order of boxes. no words are added, altered or left out.

Thomas war gestern mit einer Freundin, die kennt, schwimmen,

obwohl Erkltung hat.
Gestern war Thomas mit einer Freundin, die kennt, schwimmen,
obwohl er. hat.
Mit einer Freundin, die kennt, war Thomas gestern, obwohl
hat, schwimmen.

This is not all but notice that you have to change NOTHING in the
chunks. Many people learning German keep splitting boxes and
rearranging box content when they try to change box order. It is NOT
necessary. Just pretend to move a wooden box from one place to another
place and you will get it right.
So where were we ah yeah the options. So here they are. The ones in
parantu parana.. in those things () sound off while not being entirely
wrong
You can just insert the building blocks from the original example to get a
100% correct sentence without worrying about verb position and stuff
like that.

([when] war [who] [with whom] [despite what

fact] schwimmen.)
[when] war [who] [despite what fact] [with
whom] schwimmen.
[who] war [when][despite what fact][with whom] schwimmen.
[who] war [when][with whom][despite what fact] schwimmen.
[who] war [with whom][when][despite what fact] schwimmen.
([who] war [with whom][despite what fact][when] schwimmen.)
[who] war [despite what fact][when][with whom] schwimmen.

Crazy German 7 different ways of structurehold on I think there are

some more

[despite] war [who] [when] [with whom] schwimmen.

[despite] war [who] [with whom] [when] schwimmen.
[with whom] war [who][despite][when] schwimmen.
[with whom] war [who][when][despite] schwimmen.
20

Wow this is impressive. It is so many that I c.. oh wait there are

more.

[who] war [when][with whom] schwimmen, [despite].

[who] war [with whom][when] schwimmen, [despite].
[when] war [who] [with whom] schwimmen, [despite].
[with whom] war [who][when] schwimmen, [despite]

So quite a lo oh this just in: in theater speech there is even

morerer.

(Schwimmen war [who][when][with whom][despite].)

((Schwimmen war [who][with whom][when][despite].))
(((Schwimmen war [when][with whom][who][despite].)))
((((Schwimmen war [despite][who][when][with whom].))))

I I think thats it a total of about 12 feasible version (not counting the

off-ones) and mind you those are NOT all possible combinations. Some
combinations are grammatically wrong and thus not listed.
So this example, which by the way I spent half an hour on and which I
will never do again, shows 2 things: there are patterns visible .. clear as
a crystal and they have to do with the verb. And there is no such thing
as this one simply rule like time-manner-place that could adequately
explain this onslaught of versions.
Anyway I figure you might be a bit tired I certainly am so well call
that a day here.
What weve learned today is that a sentence basically consists of a
representation of the action, that is some verbs and certain adverbs and
particles, and a bunch of pieces of information, each of which answering
to one question. Some are optional, some mandatory and some
nonsense but that depends on the action.
In the following posts we will first have a look at sentence types and
then try to find some guidelines which box orders work and which dont.
If you have any questions just leave me a comment. I hope you liked it
and see you next time.
German Word Order Explained
Hello everyone, and welcome. I and its been kind of a tradition here to
kick off the new year with a deep look at German sentence structure.
And I think the topic that perfectly fits 2015 is
21

Word order in German

Now youre like Wait, word order is super confusing. I dont want 2015
to be super confusing. I want it to be awesome and illuminating and
freaking epic. But looking into German word order can be just that.
Because once you dig a little deeper there are some really cool
surprises. So heres what well do. First well take a look at the commonly
known rules for word order and well explain why they suckwhat their
shortcomings are. Then, well have a look at what German word order is
really about and then, well finally zero in on one core idea. An idea that
explains everything*. (*word dramatized, may not actually
mean everything, no refunds)
So are you ready to dive in and find out? Great.Now, the term word
order is actually not very precise. For example, word order could also be
the order the verbs that pile up at the end in a sentence. Like here:

Ich habe gestern ein Bier trinken knnen gewollt haben worden
gesein.** (**example dramatized, does not represent a correct
German sentence)

What I, and many others online, teachers and students alike, mean
by word order is the order of boxes. Boxes? If that doesnt ring a bell you
should check out the the article on the box model (find it here). Heres
what that is in a nutshell. A sentence consists of a verb and a bunch of
boxes. Each box answers one verb related question like where, when,
how, why, what, who and so on. Possibly, there are some adverbs
and dochs and jas cluttering the sentence but the essentials are really
verbs and boxes.

verb:
who:
what:
to whom:
where:
when:
Why:

to give
I
a book
my horse
in the stables
today
because uhm.. I got no idea, actually

For the student there are two challenges. One is where to put the verb.
The other is the order of the boxes. And thats whats commonly
called word order. Now, there are some rules about that out there.
Problem is theyre like apple trees. Only that they dont grow nice juicy
apples but confusing, random exceptions. More than we can stomach.
22

#Rules #epicfail
Probably the most famous one is probably the TeKaMoLo-rule. TeKaMoLo
is short for the German words temporal, kausal, modal
and lokal. The rule basically says that the order of boxes in a German
sentence usually is:

Te
ka
mo lo
when why how where

I hope the colors are more helpful than they are distracting. If not let me
know. But anyway heres TeKaMoLo in action.

Thomas ist gestern wegen seines Knies sehr langsam in den

Park gelaufen.
Because of his knee, Thomas walked into the park very slowly
yesterday.

And heres TeKaMoLo as it fails.

Nach Berlin fahre ich nchste Woche. place way before time
Ill go to Berlin next week.
Dort steht seit 200 Jahren ein Haus.
For 200 years, there has been a house standing there.

Now some of you might be like Wait, the rule is only for the stuff in the
middle field. So the part after the verb. Well, fair enough. That doesnt
change much though.

Das Haus steht dort seit 200 Jahren. where before when
The house has been standing there for 200 years.
I was very angry about the meeting yesterday.
Ich habe mich gestern sehr wegen des
Meetings gergert. how before why
Ich bin hier wegen Knieproblemen in Behandlung. where
before why
Im under medical treatment here because of knee problems.
Der Fahrer wartet vor der Tr mit einer Tasche. where before
how
The driver is waiting with a bag in front of the door.

23

All these sentences break the TeKaMoLo-rule and there are about
74261294 more examples*** , many of them in print (*** number
dramatized, may not be as ma actually never mind, its probably just
fine).But wait, theres more. Sometimes, following the rule can even lead
to wrong results.

Thats why I only rarely work alone there now.

Thats a normal everyday sentence. Nothing special. And using

TeKaMoLo wed get this

Ich arbeite nur noch selten deshalb allein dort.. wrong!

And this sounds just wrong. The natural order would be this:

Ich arbeite dort deshalb nur noch selten allein.

So TeKaMoLo sure sounds catchy, and its not like it never works. But
there are a LOT Of exceptions to it. Like millions. And its no different
for the next rule. Ill just quote it as I found it on About.com :
The dative object will always come before the accusative object.
Sounds like a neat rule. But as it is it would fail in probably more than
half of the cases. So theres the following amendment again, a quote
from About.com):
If the accusative object is a pronoun, it will always be before the dative
object.
Heres the rule in practice:

Ich gebe dir das Buch.

I give you the book.
Ich gebe es dir.
I give it to you.

And here are some exceptions:

I dont give you the book but your sister.

Ich gebe das Buch nicht dir sondern deiner Schwester.
Ich gebe dir das nicht.
24

I dont give you that.

Ich habe dir einen gegeben.
I gave you one.

In the first sentence, we have no pronoun and still the Dative comes
after the Accusative. So I guess wed need to modify the rule and add
some stuff like
Its Dative before Accusative except if blah blah blah yada yada yada.
Im too lazy to type that all out. In the second and third sentence, we do
have a pronoun (das, einen) and yet, its Dative before Accusative. In
case of number 2 it would actually border on wrong to stick with the
rule.

Ich gebe das dir nicht. wrong-ish

The problem is that das is a demonstrative pronoun, einen is an

indefinite pronoun and the rule simply doesnt apply to these. So wed
have to modify the amendment and say personal pronoun instead of
just pronoun and we need to know what the difference is between all
these pronouns and how to tell which is gee, Im getting incredibly
bored, just now. The whole point of this is to show you that these rules
either have millions of exceptions or they need lots of additional side
rules and some side rules for the side rules in order to actually be
workable rules. And the reason why this is is that these rules are not part
of German. They simply dont exist.
Whats really going on
When it comes to the order of boxes in a German sentence, there arent
really rules. There are tendencies. Time info often comes before place,
the dative object often comes before the accusative object, the subject
often comes very early. But theyre not rules. The word order in a
German sentence is not based on rules. Its based on magic. Nah
kidding. The word order of a sentence is the result of different
tendencies or forces pulling the boxes one way or the other. Lets take a
peek behind the scenes. Here are the parts:

verb :
who :

schenken
Thomas
25

what:
ein
Wiedergutmachungskuscheltier (that would be a Make it up to
you-stuffed animal or stuffed animal of reconciliation)
to whom:
Maria
when:
am Freitag
where:
in dem kleinen Park bei der Uni

So these are our parts and now all the tendencies or forces have a
meeting to decide which order to put the boxes in. Subject before
Object immediately starts by saying: So, I dont want to sound pushy
but Thomas defi-freaking-nitely has to come before Maria here!
Because we have no case markers to indicate what role they have. And
the others agree. Then Short before Long speaks up: I motion to have
and am Freitag come before the whole park-part. Its just sooo much
shorter. They also agree that Maria should come before the animal
because Dative before Accusative wants it and they put it far to the
right because its very connected to the verb. Finally, they talk about
how to start the sentence and no one really cares but since its would be
odd to have Thomas and Maria right next to each other, they decide to
start with the subject. The result:

Thomas hat Maria am Freitag in dem kleinen Park bei der Uni
ein Wiedergutmachungskuscheltier geschenkt..
Thomas gave Maria a reconciliatory stuffed animal on Friday in the
small park next to the university.

Now, lets assume we already know where Thomas and Maria were in
that park. Then we could just saythere (dort) as our where-box. That
would change the conversation quite a bit. Pronoun before actual
noun, who had been quiet in the other meeting, would speak up and
say that dort should come befoream Freitag. Short before long would
agree and so wed get

Thomas hat Maria dort am Freitag ein. geschenkt.

So.. this was really just a peek and you dont have to remember it. I just
wanted to give you an impression of the dynamics and hopefully you can
see that rules just cant do that justice. Its a dynamic of forces, and one
key thing to accept about German word order is:
There is not the one right solution !

26

I know its a step but you have to let go of the notion of right and wrong
and start to rely on intuition.Every sentence has a default word order.
Thats the order we get when we just let the forces balance each other
out. Its the most natural order (for that sentence) and it has very little
emphasis. But we can use a different order too. We can take a box and
put it elsewhere. Sometimes this doesnt make much of a difference but
if we go against a force that is really strong in that particular
sentence we create tension. Attention. Emphasis. The more unusual a
spot is for a box, the more tension is created because were going
against the natural tendencies there are. Sometimes this tension can be
so strong that we need a very very specific context as well as a proper
pronunciation to justify it. In grammar jargon these examples are called
Highly marked. But its not necessarily wrong. Lets look at an
example. Ill mark any special emphasis in blue.

Ich gebe dir heute das Buch. (default, very little special emphasis)
Ich gebe dir das Buch heute.
Heute gebe ich das Buch dir.
Heute gebe ich dir das Buch. (almost default)
Das Buch gebe ich dir heute.
Das Buch gebe ich heute dir.
Dir gebe ich heute das Buch.
Dir gebe ich das Buch heute.

Hey, remember when we had that rule that the dative come before the
accusative? But wait theres more.

Dir gebe das Buch heute ICH. <uber-Emphasis

Das Buch gebe dir heute ICH.<-mega-emphasis
((Heute gebe das Buch dir ich. ))
((Das Buch gebe heute dir ich. ))

Of all these examples only the last two sound wrong. And why? Well,
think of it this way, we gone against pretty much all the forces that there
are and theres just too much tension now. It hurts. A bit like Yoga.
Bending and stretching your limbs can be nice. Its physically
demanding, may even hurt a bit but it also makes you feel your body,
feel more alive and stuff. But over-bending thats not fun anymore.
So, now youre probably like My god how on earth are we supposed to
learn that??? But its not going to be as confusing as it sounds. Well
see that theres actually a lot of common sense involved. But learning
27

all these forces and how they interact and where they pull which box
when that doesnt sound easy. Well, no it doesnt. Its actually
impossible. But the good news is this: The various forces or tendencies
actually dont really matter because theyre just expressions of one
fundamental underlying idea. And that idea has to do with the head.
Head final
Head final is a linguistic term and it basically describes that the main
thing comes after all the specifics.

a hot, tasty coffee

This is the perfect example for a head-final phrase. The main info,
the head, is coffee and the specifics come before it. The object is coffee.
Thats the head. And all the describing words come before it. The
opposite of head final is head initial. I think head-first sounds cooler
though, so well just use that. Anyway, and example for head-first would
be how the Romance languages treat (most) of the adjectives.

un caf chaud et delicieux

The main thing, the head, comes first and the specifics come after.
Heres another example, this time without adjectives.

der Sicherheitschef
the chief of security.

You probably guessed it. The German compound nouns follow the headfinal structure while the English version (in this case) is head-first. So
thats the idea of a head and it also works for whole sentences where
the head is the verb. Hold on someones at the do.. oh wait, it was just
a bell ringing ;). Now, most languages do use both ideas in their
grammar somewhere, but still they usually lean toward one of the two
paradigms. And German well it is marbled with head-final structure You
can see it in the compounds, the adjectives and most important of all
the verbs

Dnndarmpassagenuntersuchung
small bowel follow-through examination

28

Die bei Star Bucks arbeitende, schne Frau hat mir eine Latte
gemacht. (*ahem)
The beautiful woman working at Star Bucks made me a latte.
I promise, that Ill give you the book tomorrow.
Ich verspreche, dass ich dir morgen das Buch gebe.
Ich habe dir das Buch gestern in der Uni gegeben.
I gave you the book yesterday at school.

Sure, theres examples where the real verb is in position 2. As I said, its
rarely that strict. But at its heart German is head-final. It even has it
tattooed on its butt. Head final forever it reads, with hearts and
flowers and humming birds, its quite cheesy. So German is a
languages that is used to boring us with all kinds of specifics before it
gets to the main thing. But before we get to talking about how that can
help us clear up word order once and for all lets wait a week :). This is
it for today. Heres what weve learned so far: rules about word order
suck, theres no right or wrong, just normal and not normal, and German
saves the best for last. If you have any questions or suggestions just
leave me a comment. I hope you liked it and see you next time. And
welcome to 2015 :)
German Word Order Explained 2
Hello everyone,
and welcome to the second part of our look at the mess that seems to
be
German Word Order
And before we get to it lets do a super quick recap what we learned in
part one. (find it here) weve learned three things.
Number one:
The rules you can usually find are not very good. And how could they.
Because number 2:
There are no rules. And theres not one correct order. Theres a default
order which is the result of a fascinating interplay of several forces,
pulling the elements in different directions. And the speaker has a lot of
freedom to rearrange stuff for emphasis. Problem is that these
interactions are uber complex and dynamic. We cannot really learn
that. Which leads us directly to number three:
29

In linguistics there is the concept of a head of a phrase and we learned

that German is at its soul a head-final language. You know like its
close relatives Korean and Japanese. Theyre head final too.
Today, well find out how this head-final-ness of German can help us
explain everything. Well, not everything, but a lot. Its going to be tough
and Im not saying that every sentence youll ever say will be correct.
But at least things will make sense. Promise!
One quick word before we start. When they do structure analysis in
linguistics they actually use the side sentence form. So instead of
analyzing

Ich gehe in den Park.

they analyze

(Ich sage), dass ich in den Park gehe.

The reason is that position 1 is kind of special, as is the verb in position

number two. The real order of stuff is much clearer in the side sentence
structure. But its a bit unnatural and we want to know how normal
sentences are built, so we wont go that far. But well ignore position 1
here for now. Its kind of special and it would just make things a lot more
confusing. Ill just put a very natural element in there. I know the legend
says that stuff gets put there for emphasis but that is about as
accurate as the TeKaMoLo-garbage oh. Ops I guess you know my real
opinion now.
Anyway, lets see if head-final is any better.
Thats what she said, by the way.
Head-final basically means knowing what your beer tastes like
before you even know its a beer.

Ich trinke ein kaltes, leicht bitteres, im Abgang ein wenig an

Zitronen erinnerndes Bier.
Im drinking a cold, slightly bitter beer reminiscent of lemon in the
finish.

The specifics come before the main thing. And all we have to do is to
generalize that a bit to get the fundamental principle of German
sentence structure:
30

The more interesting, relevant and defining something is, the

later it comes.
This is quite long and we cant make a cool acronym so well refer to it
as unicorn wisdom. We could call it fundamental principle, I guess, but
that term makes me tired and my mouth dry. So unicorn wisdom.
Theres really not much to explain about the sentence itself. But its
really powerful. Watch.

Ich bin blah blah yada yada yada blah blah gegangen.
I went blah blah blah
(the English version nicely shows that English is head-first)

Tadahhh now we know why the verb is at the very end. Because the
verb is the most important, most interesting and most defining part of a
sentence. And now we also know why the prefix is at the end.

Ich mache das Fenster ____ .

Because besides the verb itself, the prefix is the next most defining part.
We cant even translate the example yet because we effectively do NOT
know whats going on.
So this is head-final at its best. And it doesnt stop there. Next to the
verb or the prefix is the element that is most defining, most important
for it.
So what say we look at a few examples to get a feel for it.
Getting comfy with it
Lets take the verb to be.If I walk up to you and say

I am

A first question you might ask could be where or what but certainly
not when or why. So if if we want to say I was in the park yesterday
the most natural order in German is this:

Ich war gestern im Park.

while:

31

Ich war im Park gestern.

is quite odd. Not wrong. Theres just a lot of tension because where is
much more relevant for to be thanwhen. So wed really need a strong
context to move around the boxes like this.
Now take a look at this example

Ich war mde im Bro.

Ich war im Bro mde.

Here, we have where and what (how), both quite relevant questions
for to be. And here we can move around the elements WITHOUT
creating all that much tension. Were just shifting the focus.

I was at the office, all tired.

I was tired at the office.

The first sentence tells us where I was with an added specific about how.
The second tells us how I was with an added specific where.
All right. The next example is a little more clear. Here are the parts:

trinken
ich
ein Bier
im Park
gestern.

Beside the verb and the subject (which well ignore) we have information
about when, where and whatin here. And by default the most relevant
part is what. Just imagine I come to you and completely out of the blue
I say

I drink.

Youd probably ask what. Well, okay you might also be like Im sorry.
Are you going to meetings?, but anyway. The what is more interesting,
more defining than when or where and thats why in the default order
the beer comes final

Ich habe gestern im Park ein Bier getrunken.

I drank a beer yesterday in the park.

32

We can move something after the beer. For instance the park. But that
would create quite some tension and wed need a proper context to
hold the pieces there.

Ich habe gestern ein Bier im Park getrunken, (aber nicht in der
Bar.)
I had a beer in the PARK yesterday, but not in the bar.

And what about time and place. Could we switch them up here? Yes, we
actually could

Ich habe gestern im Park

Ich habe im Park gestern

The first version sounds a little bit more natural though. Now, this might
sound crazy but I think its because for a human being, or for any animal
for that matter location is more important than time. You can see
location. If youre not able to orient in a 3-dimensional space, youll have
serious problems catching your food or building a house or walking
through a door. But you can live without the notion of time just fine.
Sure, these days time is tremendoublah blah blah language is so old
that it would make sense that place has a notch of importance more
than time.
It certainly does in the next example which represents a big group of
verbs: the movement verbs. Again, here are our parts:

gehen
ich
am Freitag
in den Park
zum Trainieren (for a work)
mit Maria

Besides the verb and the subject we have when, where,

why and how(with whom). And now guess whats the most important
of course. The where. If I walk up to you and tell you without ANY
context

Ill fly.

your reaction would probably be Oh, where?. Well okay, you might also
be like Have you been drinking? but anyway. When we talk about a
33

movement, and also about a position-verb by the way, the most defining
thing is naturally the location. And so in the default version of the
sentence the park has to come as far right as possible. And in this case,
since there are no left-overs of the verb, itll be at the very end.

Ich gehe am Freitag zum Trainieren mit Maria in den Park.

We can move one of the other behind it.

Ich gehe am Freitag mit Maria in den Park zum Trainieren.

But that would create quite some tension and again, wed need a special
context for the why to be more important than the where.

in den Park zum Trainieren. Nicht zum chillen.

So.. park has to be final. But what about the rest. The info about when I
go, why I go, and how (with whom) I go. Well the truth is these
elements are all equal. None is automatically more interesting than the
other. It totally depends on my personal focus. And thats why we can
arrange them in all possible orders and were barely creating any serious
tension or emphasis. Whatever comes later just sounds a bit more
defining for the verb.

Ich gehe mit einer Freundin zum Trainieren am Freitag in den Park.
Ich gehe mit einer Freundin am Freitag zum Trainieren in den Park
Ich gehe zum Trainieren am Freitag mit einer Freundin in den Park.
(Ill just skip the rest but its 6 in total)

They all mean exactly the same and they all feel perfectly natural. And
the emphasis on the later element is really just a nuance here.
Cool.
Now before we go on into trickier territory lets do one more example. I
just told you my theory about how time is generally not as important as
place. But in the right context it can be.

aufgehen
die Sonne
in Berlin
um 7.

34

Aufgehen, among other things, means to rise and in context with the
sun, the more interesting question is when. Because the sun rises
everywhere. But not at the same time.

Die Sonne geht in Berlin um 7 auf.

The sun rises at 7 in Berlin.
(English again has the reverse order, because it is head first)

We could say

Die Sonne geht um 7 in Berlin auf.

But wed have some tension and thus a rather strong focus on Berlin as
opposed to elsewhere. Its not wrong, but its not the most natural way
to say it.
All right.
So I hope you got a first impression of the whole unicorn wisdomapproach. But of course its not quite that simple.
Getting less comfy with it
Lets start right with an example:

geben
ich
einen Kuss
meiner Freundin
im Supermarkt
gestern

In English, we could assemble that to

I gave my girlfriend a kiss in the supermarket yesterday.

And in German? Well, the most relevant info for geben is certainly the
answer to what. Like if I said

I give

Youd probably ask what. So the kiss should be at the end, right before
the verb. Cool. Now about the other stuff. Imagine I walk up to you and
say
35

I gave a kiss.

the most natural question would be to whom. So my girlfriend should

come right before kiss because the question-test suggests that its the
next most rele oh hold on, theres the solution already.

Ich habe meiner Freundin gestern im Supermarkt einen Kuss

gegeben.

Oh. Okay. uhm. the girlfriend comes kind of prematurely I mean

early. This is weird uh and what would happen if we moved her

Ich habe gestern im Supermarkt meiner Freundin einen Kuss

gegeben.

Uh-huh. I see. So theres a slight emphasis there. So both positions

seem to work okay and the first one, the one with the early girlfriend
seems a teeny tiny bit more natural to me.
This is a bit irritating.
And in fact its not only here. Any example where theres a transfer of
sorts will have the receiver rather early in the default order.

Ich habe meinem Boss gestern beim Meeting meine Meinung

gesagt. most natural
Ich habe gestern beim Meeting meinem Boss meine Meinung
gesagt. slight emphasis on boss.
I told my boss my opinion at the meeting yesterday.
Ich habe meiner Freundin vor zwei Wochen zum Geburtstag eine
Waage gekauft. most natural
Ich habe vor zwei Wochen zum Geburtstag meiner Freundin eine
Waage gekauft. sounds wrongish
I bought a scale for my girlfriends birthday two weeks ago.

This raised her eyebrow. And for us it raises some questions. Lets raise
some more.
Getting quite uncomfy with it
It was stupid idea. The scale. My girlfriend wasnt amused at all. And so I
gave it away.

I gave the scale to a friend

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Its just geben and two elements so we should be good, rigtht? We can
do that. The scale is the most defining element for geben so the natural
order must be.

Ich habe die Waage einem Freund gegeben.

WHAT? This is totally the reverse of what I expected. And this is the
default? What about the other way around?

Ich habe einem Freund die Waage gegeben.

Whaaaaaaat? Tension on friend?!?! Im really starting to think German is

trying to mess with me.
And theres more. Take this example.

Ich habe am Montag im Supermarkt ein Brot gekauft.

I bought a loaf of bread in the supermarket on Monday.

This is nothing surprising. The most defining element for buying is

certainly the info about what I buy and it comes where it should at the
end. What happens if we move it?

Ich habe ein Brot gestern im Supermarkt gekauftunnatural

This isnt a surprise either. We have a lot of tension here, which creates a
lot of emphasis which only makes sense if we want to contrast the
supermarket with something. Like I bought my bread IN THE
SUPERMARKET as opposed to THE BAKERY. ButAll it takes to change
everything is changing one little word.

Ich habe das Brot gestern im Supermarkt gekauft.

Poooooooof. All the tension unnatural tension is gone. The supermarket

is the most relevant item here too. Its at the end after all. But this is the
default order now and having das Brot final is the version with
unnatural tension.

Ich habe gestern im Supermarkt das Brot gekauft.

Everyone would be wondering What bread?.

And then, theres of course that thing weve ignored all the time. The
subject. I mean if I just said
37

drinks

wouldnt be the natural reaction to ask who? Okay, well I guess the
most natural reaction is Sure thing.. But you know what mean.
So at this point I think its totally natural to have reservations
regarding unicorn wisdom. I would have them for sure. But unicorn
wisdom isnt to blame. Its us. Weve made a mistake. We forgot
something. Because where theres light, there is also shadow. Where
theres left, theres also right. And where theres late, theres also early.
Everything has two sides. Yin and Yang. We need to find the other side of
unicorn wisdom. We have one part of the magical gem. We need the
other part. For only together we can unlock their full power. So we shall
venture out and meet again. next week :).
Sorry for pulling a Hollywood franchise on you and making a part 3. I
actually wanted to do just one post but that would have been really
really superficial. And then I wanted to do just two posts but I am really
bad at planning and I think weve done enough for today anyway.
I really hope this was not too detailed or too nerdy, so let me know in the
comments if it was at least a little bit helpful. And of course if you have
any questions please bombard me.
So this was part two of our look at German word order and what weve
done is raise more questions than we answered :)
I hope you liked it and see you next time.

German Word Order 3

| 68 Comments
Hello everyone,
and welcome to the third part of our mini series on
German Word Order
and if you havent read part 1 and part 2 yet, you really should do that
because todays post wont make much sense without it. So here they
are:

German Word Order 1

38

German Word Order 2

And no, there will be no recap. Our poles wont get one either.
Wow, Worst Pun Ever Award, Im coming.
Anyway, so last time was all about head final and the notion of
important stuff coming very late. But it turned out that this couldnt
quite explain everything. Because its actually only half of the the truth.
Today, well look at the other half. So are you ready to jump in once
more, even if the water looks a little nerdy?
Awesome.
The first half, the Yin of word order, was this:
The more interesting or defining something is the later it comes.
I got the second half, the Yang, on my notes right here and Im gonna
read it to you know. Behold:
The less interesting, less defining something is, the earlier it
comes.
I know what youre thinking now. Youre like This is really really really
really dumb. And youre right. It does sound kind of stupid. I mean
its the exact same idea as the first sentence. Just seen from the other
side. Of course the less interesting stuff has to come early when the
more interesting stuff comes late. Not
everything can come late, right?
But its really helpful to actually spell it out that way. This unicorn
wisdom reversed, as well call it, puts focus on the early stuff and thats
exactly what we need. So lets keep an open and mind and give it a
chance.
Must-have-earlys
Before we get all abstract again its probably a good a idea to see
unicron wisdom reversed do some real, honest work. Like making
some real position decisions that we can understand without having to
bend our mind. So well start of with a look at elements that MUST come
early.
Like for example certain reflexive pronouns. Your favorite kind ;).
39

Ich habe [mich] gestern wie immer fr Schwarzbier entschieden.

As always, I decided to go/opted for dark beer yesterday.

German needs the mich in this sentence and it needs it there.

Ich habe gestern

[ mich ] wie immer [ mich] fr

Schwarzbier [MICH] entschieden.

(the last position is ultra turbo hyper wrong because the thing I
decide for or against is just so strongly connected to the verb itself)
All of these position create a HUGE amount of tension, a lot of emphasis
on mich. The problem is emphasis is for content but the word has
none. Just imagine someone walks up to and goes like I have something
really cool in my hands and then theres nothing. And the person is
like Isnt that cool?. That would be weird and its kind of like that here.
The mich has NO substance. I mean I cant decide someone else,
after all. It doesnt add any information to the verb. Its completely
boring and the only reason its even there is grammar. Having it come
later implies that is has some interesting message, but it doesnt. Its
pure function.And thats why it has to come as early as possible.
Now, not all self references are completely empty meaning-wise.

Ich habe mich gestern im Fernsehen gesehen.

I saw myself on TV yesterday

Thomas could also have seen someone else on TV. So here, the self
reference does make a difference for the message. And thats why other
positions are possible.

Ich habe [mich] gestern [mich] im Fernsehen [mich] gesehen.

The first slot is clearly the most natural one. The others do create a
strong emphasis. But this mich can handle it because it has substance.
It makes a difference to the message. And thats why having it later
doesnt sound wrong.
Now, these self references that are only there for the structure are not
the only examples for elements that are quite empty. Another one is this
weather-es.

40

It is cloudy today.

Es ist heute wolkig.

What is this es? What does it stand for? Truth is, doesnt mean
anything. Its just a generic subject we put in there because of grammar.
So from a message point of view it is completely uninteresting. And that
has consequences for where it can be put in a sentence.

Letzten Freitag hat [ es ] in Berlin [es] zum ersten mal seit

6 Wochen [es] nicht den ganzen Tag [es ] geregnet.

Last Friday, it wasnt raining all day for the first time in 6 weeks.

Only the first slot works. All the others create special emphasis
and es has no substance to live up to that attention.
All right.
So, these were some examples where unicorn wisdom reversed clearly
calls the shots. But its more powerful than that. For instance it can help
us with the subject.
the often early subject
One of the very consistent trend of German is that the subject usually
comes very early

Despite Marias protest, Thomas bought 4 different kinds of stinky

cheese at the market yesterday.

Gestern hat [Thomas] auf dem Markt [Thomas] trotz Marias

Protest [Thomas] vier verschiedene Sorten
Stinkekse [THOMAS] gekauft.

The first slot is the default, the most natural position. The others are not
wrong. But the tension and the resulting emphasis is HUGE. Like

It was THOMAS, T H O M A S, who bought 4 different kinds

of smelly cheese despite and so on and so on.

And the last slot it sounds even wrong.

Its like that for most sentences. The subject comes super early.
41

Combined with unicorn wisdom reversed that would mean that the
subject is the least or at least one of the least defining elements.
Well it actually is.
Now youre probably all like WHAAAAT?. And I understand. Of course
its interesting for us to knowwho does something. But last time, weve
learned that the verb itself is the head of a sentence. Its the most
important part. And so for word order we have to judge everything
looking from the perspective of the verb. How defining is an element for
THE ACTIVITY. How much does a certain activity change if the subject
changes. And the answer for many activities is not very much.
The who is not defining for the activity. Like imagine a step by step
video tutorial about how to make an onion tart. Wed want to see the
hands doing stuff, not the face narrating. We can define activities
without a subject just fine just think of receipes

die Zwiebeln in kleine Ringe schneiden

cut the onions into small rings

die Butter in der Pfanne langsam zergehen lassen

let butter slowly melt in the pan

Or calendars.

28.1.:

nach der Arbeit mit Maria zum Trainieren in den Park

(going to the park with Maria for a work out after word)

30.1.:

bei Maria fr die Sache bei der Party entschuldigen

(apologize to Maria for what happened at the party)

Februar: einen neuen Trainingspartner fr Donnerstags suchen

(find a new work out buddy for Thursdays)

Most activities can be described and defined just fine without mentioning
the subject. And for these activities the subject will come very early,
just like unicorn wisdom reverse predicts.

Am 28.1. ist Thomas nach der Arbeit mit Maria zum .

Am 30.1. hat sich Thomas (sich) bei Maria fr die Sache bei ..

Im Februar will (sich) Thomas (sich) einen neuen Trainingspartner

.

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Now, that doesnt apply to all subjects. There are some verbs for which
the who is very defining. In fact, there is a whole construction in which
the subject comes rather late. The passive voice.
In passive the direct object of the verb, which is often the most defining
element, gets turned into thesubject.

On Sunday, someone saw wolves near the village for the first
time in 30 years.

On Sunday, wolves were seen near the village for the first time in
30 years.

The first sentence is active, the second is passive. The wolves changed
their grammatical role. But they didnt change their role in relation to the
verb. In both sentences they are whats being seen, the most defining
element for the verb to see. And the who, the person who saw them, is
missing entirely in the second sentence. No problem, because its not
that defining anyway. Now lets see what happens in German.

Am Sonntag hat jemand in der Nhe des Dorfes zum ersten Mal
seit 30 Jahren Wlfegesehen.

Am Sonntag

wurden in der Nhe des Dorfes zum ersten Mal

seit 30 Jahren Wlfegesehen.

These sentences are the most natural orders and they have
their subject at completely different positions. And while I can move
around jemand without creating too much tension, the wolves shouldnt
be moved. Because they are most defining for the verb while the who
doesnt matter all that much.
All right. So now we know why the subject often comes very early. The
key thing is to realize that its not defining for the verb and then unicorn
wisdom reversed does the rest.
All right. So this was the subject.
Another group of words that often comes early are personal pronouns.
Early pronouns
Lets start with an example:

43

1.

Wie findetst du mein neues Shirt? Ich habe es gestern nach der
Arbeit auf dem Markt .

2.

Ich habe gestern nach der Arbeit auf dem Markt ein neues
Shirt gekauft.

1.

I bought a new shirt yesterday at the market after work.

2.

How do you like my new shirt? I bought it yesterday .

In the first version, the shirt is at the end right next to the verb. That
makes sense because for the verb to buy the thing being bought is very
defining. In the second version however, the item bought is referred to
by es. And this es comes very early. The question is: why.
And the answer is because its boring. We know the shirt already. It has
been established. So in this very sentence it is the least interesting bit.
And thats why it comes so early. Having it later would be really odd.
Like imagine I walk up to you and say

How do you like my new shirt? I bought IT, I to the T yesterday

at the market .

Youd would be like Why the heck is he putting that weird emphasis on
it? What is he trying to tell me?. Moving es further to the rear suggests
that it is an interesting piece of news. But it isnt. And thats not limited
to es.It goes for many pronouns. Their natural position is early because
we already know the thing they refer to. Its an established part of the
conversation and so its not that interesting. At least its less interesting
than the stuff we dont know yet.
And that brings us to a very intuitive way of seeing German sentences.
A sentence a scene
A German sentence kind of works like a movie scene. Theres a set up
and then theres a pay off. We see our protagonists, theres a scenery
with stuff we might know and then the scene unfold and we learn
something new. Like the manager walks into the office in the morning
and the first thing her secretary tells her about the emergency meeting

Die Managerin kommt morgens ins Bro. Direkt als

erstes erzhlt ihr ihre Sekretrin von dem Notfallmeeting.
44

Look at the second sentence. The pronoun ihr comes even before the
subject (the secretary) because the secretary hasnt been mentioned
yet. But the main news is the emergency meeting and that is at the
end. The sentence gets set up and then comes the pay off, the new
information. And as simple as this sounds, this is actually a blueprint for
most German sentences. Heres a little story.

Thomas hat sich gestern ein Hrbuch bestellt.

Am Samstag hat er es beim Aufrumen gehrt.
Danach hat er es Maria gegeben. Sie hatte es sich aber schon aus
dem Internet heruntergeladen illegal natrlich. Deshalb war
sie sehr erschrocken als sie einen Brief der Polizei in ihrem
Briefkasten fand. Sie hat das ihrem Anwalt erzhlt.

Thomas ordered an audio book yesterday.

On Saturday, he listened to it while cleaning.
After that he gave it to Maria. But she had already downloaded it
from the web illegally of course. Thats why she was quite
shocked to find a letter from the police in her mail box. She told her
lawyer about that.

Not the most interesting read but can you see how in each sentence the
stuff we know comes first setting the stage for the new, interesting bit
we learn in the second half. Its a bit like domino, too, actually.
That simple notion of first set up- then pay off, in all its simplicity,
works surprisingly well to explain why a a sentence is the way it is.
Lets just look at a few examples with that idea in mind. some of which
weve already seen in previous posts because Im too lazy to think of
new on I mean, because for pedagogical reasons or something.

Ich habe gestern im Supermarkt ein Brot gekauft.

Ich habe das Brot gestern im Supermarkt gekauft.

Why is das Brot earlier than ein Brot? Well, by saying das were
implying that the bread is already part of a broader scenery. The
audience knows what bread. And thats why its natural spot is in the
front. It is setting, not news. Ein Brot on the other hand could be news.
Wed say that if no bread was established before.
Same here
45

Ich habe meiner Freundin eine Waage gekauft.

(I bought a scale for my girlfriend).

Ich habe die Waage einem Freund gegeben.

(I gave the scale to a friend)

In the first sentence, the scale is the news. In the second, the scale is
part of the scenery already and the news is what happens with it.
And the example with the wolves? Well, the wolves are the grammatical
subject. But theyre not really the protagonist. They are the news. They
are the main thing we learn after all the scenery has been set up. So the
scene-analogy also holds for these sentences.

Ich habe [meiner Freundin] gestern nach der Arbeit [meiner

Freundin] einen Apfel gegeben.

I gave my girlfriend an apple after work yesterday.

Damn, these examples are starting to get boring. Im sorry. But anyway,
this one is actually an example for one of the questions we had last time.
The question was why for a transfer-verb like geben the receiver (here:
my girlfriend) often comes quite early even though its quite defining for
the verb AND it isnt a personal pronoun either.
Well, the easiest way to make sense of it is to think of the receiver as a
protagonist. And protagonists come early. The receiver is usually part of
the set up, not of the pay off. And that makes sense because. my
girlfriend is not really news. Maybe she wasnt part of the conversation
until this point BUT. she is definitely part of what we could call my
broader scenery. So when Im go on stage, shes kind of established too
because she is part of my world. And in fact, that isnt limited to people.
My friend, his mother, her flat, your bike... everything that has
some relation to the subject of a sentence is to some extend always part
of the scenery. At least more than a friend, a mother, a flat or a bike.
Sohis bike is more likely to come early than a bike.
All right.
Now, so far weve looked at the default order.But the whole scene-idea
also helps with some crazier orders. So lets look at two of those.

CEO 1 : Was war heute morgen los? Ich habe fast 100
verpasste Anrufe aus dem Bro.
CEO 2: Mich hat heute keiner angerufen.
46

CEO 1: What was going this morning? I have almost 100 missed
calls from the office.
CEO 2: Well, I wasnt called AT ALL.

This is definitely special. The subject is late and the direct object is in
first position. That creates a strong stress on both, keiner and mich. But
it makes perfect sense that way. Why? Because keiner is the actual
news in this sentence. Thats the message, the punch line. Mich on the
other hand is just picking up the mantle of who is being called, and that
was already part of the conversation.

Wie lufts mit deiner Masterarbeit? Kommst du voran?

Geht so. Richtig angefangen hab ich ehrlich gesagt erst letzte
Woche.

Hows it going with your masters thesis. Are you making

progress?
Meh, so and so. Like I actually really started only last week.

This is even weirder. The verb itself has been moved forward. I dont
even know how to create a similar effect in English. Theres a lot of
tension and theres a strong focus on richtig angefangen but again it
makes perfect sense. Starting is a part of writing a masters thesis. And
so it was already part in some way part of the conversation, even though
it wasnt named specifically. The real news in the sentence islast week.
Thats what we learn, and thats at the very end.
Now, we could go on going over examples forever but hey.. its not these
details that youll remember. So lets just stop here and do the rest in
the comments.
What matters is that you got a feel for the basic idea. German is a head
final language and that shows big time in word order. The set up comes
first and with it the subject and all the stuff we already know. Then
comes the pay off, the news we learn in the sentence and the most
defining element of that comes last.
And thats the secret of word order. Not rules. Just a natural story
progression.
Now, I actually wanted to include an extra bit about position 1 as well as
some words about oral emphasis. But Im tired and I really need a break
from word order now so well do it in a nutshell.
47

On position 1:
Stuff that was early anyway will sound natural in position 1 and wont
create any notable emphasis. Stuff that comes late will create a strong
emphasis and you need a good reason to do it. Grammar filler cannot be
put into position 1.

[Gestern/ich] habe [ich] mir [gestern] ein Bier gekauft. natural

Ein Bier habe ich mir gestern gekauft. emphasis on beer.

On oral emphasis:
The interaction between oral emphasis and word order is too complex to
describe it. Sometimes oral emphasis is needed to justify an order,
sometimes oral emphasis can overrule the order and shift focus.

Ich habe DIR das Buch gegeben. oral stress shifts focus from
book to dir

Ich habe das Buch DIR gegeben sentence only sounds right with
the oral emphasis there.

And I think thats it. That was our mini series on word order.
Obviously, theres a lot of Sprachgefhl involved, so dont get frustrated
if not everything youre trying out, works. But I hope you got an
impression that German word order is not a wild forest of random rules
and exceptions but a fascinating, dynamic and flexible thing that you
can only get a hold of if youre able to let go. Common sense, intuition
and the stuff weve learned should get you much further than rules.
Now, there are heaps of specific cases and structures that dont
immediately fit in with what weve said and that could use some
explaining. So lets collect them here in the comments. If you come
across an order that is weird or that seems to defy what weve said, just
post it and we can analyze it together.
And of course, if you have general questions about what weve learned
today, or something wasnt quite clear or didnt make sense just leave a
comment and Ill try to clear it up.
Next week well do something softer. That was a spoiler by the way.
Until then, have some great days.
Bis nchstes mal :)
48

German Cases Explained

Hello everyone,
and welcome. It is not gonna be a Word of the Day today but another
episode of our German is Easy Learn German onli what? I
promisednoch last time? Well, whatever. I need help for that but my
philosopher friend had no time this week. So itll have to wait a little
longer. Yes, I know youre pissed but because today well learn all there
is to know about
German Cases
Hooray.
So the question most learners have is
How can I know which case to use? Its soo confusing.
The solution however is really really simple. Just check out the question.
If youd ask Wen? then its going to be Accusative or as we also call it
wen-Fall. If youd ask wem? then its Dative (or Wem-Fall), for
Genitive its wessen? and for Nominative its wer? Lets do an example.

I forgive him.

To forgive is vergeben (away-idea of the ver-prefix, anyone?). Now

which case do we have to use this time. Well lets look at the question
and find out.

Wem vergebe ich?

SHA BAAAAAMS. Its Dative. Now, is that a kick ass system or what?
But, Emanuel, I dont know which question to ask in the fir
No,no,no stop being so overly negative. It is really simple whether you
like it or not
Okay of course I am kidding. This approach works for German kids
when they have to determine the case of a thing in school. They can ask
they right question because they are native speakers and they KNOW
what to use, they just dont know the name. But for a student this
explanation makes
.

NO

SENSE

49

at all. Some Germans might try and use that to explain cases to you
which is normal because for them it works and they are not teachers.
Just tell em it doesnt work or,if they insist it be simple, just nod and say
Ach so Aha:. But if a teacher ever does it well have a nap. Or run
away. Or cry. Or do some social media stuff with your phone. Or ask your
neighbor out on a date. Lots of options. Feeling stupid is not one of
them.
But anyway today well get the low down on German cases and never
talk about them again (you wish).
We have already talked about cases in general like what they are
and how they work in different languages so if you want to check this
out first to get some background then go here.

What the heck are cases.

Also, I will be using the term box quite a bit. Ill give a very very quick
explanation of what I mean by that in a little bit but if you feel lost or you
feel like you want to know more about the boxes and what the deal is
with them, the check out this from the archives:

German Sentence Structure 1 The Box Model

All right. What will we do today? Well talk about the German cases.
Well see when cases are used to begin with and well find out how to
determine which is the right one AND, as far as possible, well flesh out
the underlying idea of the each of the 5 cases Nominative, Genitive,
Dative, Accusative and Neverheardofthatative.
Oh,the last one doesnt really exist.
Gee, thanks Cpt. Obvious. Anyways we have a lot ahead of us. It kinda
smells part 2 actually. And you know what that means today its all the
boring stuff plus just some essentials without which part 2 is
incomprehensible. Sounds good? Cool.
So lets start with a look at a German sentence and find out when we
have to use cases to begin with.
A German sentence basically consists of an action, represented by one
or a bunch of verbs and a number of boxes. A box is basically a chunk of
words that together answer to one specific question about the action.
like why?, when?, what? and of course who?
50

Inside a box can be just one word like for instance he or a full side
sentence like When I saw her.
Cool. Now, the next thing to understand is that there are different kinds
of words. And one group are the words that stand for things or persons
from the real world.
Tree is such a word, and so is wish. But also I, you, he or it, because
they stand for some entity (thing or person) from the real world. And
now comes the crucial point those words for things and persons
whenever you want to put them in a box you have to put them in a case.
Hello? Cpt. Obvious?? Is that you again? hmm no? Hey, Cap, if you
just said that, that wasnt so obvious, that was actually kind of deep.
To put it in a box you have to put it in a case
I like that. But it basically means, that EVERYTHING is in a case. Every
single thing. Ugh. Give us a break German!
NOMINATIVE
Luckily, German does give us a break, because the nominative isnt
really a case it is more like the default factory setting. Words in the
dictionary are in nominative case.

der Tisch, die Wand, die Studenten, ich, du

Those are not in no case. Those are in Nominative case. So, in a way,
every language has at least one case if you will because every word has
at least a basic form. Maybe it doesnt have other forms (other cases)
but it has a basic form. You dont really put a word into nominative
case, you just leave it as it is. Heres a really dumb allergy uh
alloger. erm comparison thing. A crazy witch (she stands for German)
can turn wood into gold, ponies or garbage. You walk up there with some
wood and she gives you back wood. She hasnt done anything.
Anyone (that stands for language) could have done that. Come and hand
me some wood, I can sure hand back wood but does that mean that I
have cas uh magical inflection powers? No. By the way does anyone
know if I can call in sick if I have a sinus inflection?
So my whole point is the Nominative is a case, yes, but it is the
default so it doesnt really require you to do anything. Just leave things
as they are.
Now, when can we do that? When can we leave things in nominative?
51

ONLY the items in one box are allowed to stay in Nominative the box
that answers to Who? as in Who does it? In German, we could call
it wer-box. Put in more gram.. hey whats so funny back there? Beware?
Why beware? What? Because its full moon and the wer-box is on the
loose seeking vict haha.. how funny. a little concentration please!
So the grammatical term for this is the subject. The subject stays
in Nominative case. All the rest doesnt. Lets look at a sentence with
lots of stuff in it.

[Meine Schwester] hat [ich] an [der Montag] [der Stift] auf [der
Tisch] gelegt.
On [Monday], my sister put [the pen] on [the table] for [I].

All the words that represent things or persons from the real world are in
[] and they are all in the default nominative case. However, my sister is
the only one who can stay in it because she is the subject. All the rest
has to be put in some other case. Which one? Well get to that later.
Here are some more examples all the stuff is in nominative but only
the subject is rightfully so. (so the red stuff isWRONG.)

[Ich] schlafe [der ganze Tag].

[I] sleep all day.
[Die Frau] geht an [das Wochenende] gern mit [ihre
Freundin] tanzen.
[The woman] likes to go dancing [with friends] [on weekends].
[Das Fahrrad] hat [ein Platter].
[The bike] has [a flat tire]

Now of course there can be more than one thing acting as subject.

[Thomas und seine Freundin] essen [Thunfisch].

There is still only one subject box and the persons and things in that box
remain in Nominative.
All right. Now what about this

[Steve] ist [ein Idiot].

Steve, a completely random name chosen for example purposes, is

clearly the subject here, so he can be in Nominative. Idiot certainly is a
word for something from the real world but it is NOT the subject so
based on what weve learned so far it should change into a different
52

case. And yet, it is in Nominative too. This is a curiosity that often trips
up students. Its true demon name is Prdikatsnomi___ but we must
not utter it in full lest it come for us. The true name has the power to
summon it, you know. So well just call it. .. weird assignment thing.
The verb isnt really about what Steve does. Maybe he does nothing but
sit in the office and scratches his belly. It is about what he is. Maybe hes
the fraternity buddy of some network executive, or just an idiot. Either
way, the sentence is just an assignment kind of like an equation. Steve
= idiot.
In fact, in Arabian you wouldnt even necessarily say a verb there. You
would just say
toidI evetS
But anyway,so for these sort of equations, German uses Nominative for
both sides and that is also true for a few verbs that kind of group around
to be

Maria wird mal eine gute Mutter.

Maria will be a good mother.
Thomas bleibt ein guter Snger.
Thomas remains/stays/will always be a good singer.

There are a couple more (sich fhlen als to feel as, sich erweisen
als to turn out as) but sein, werdenand bleiben are really the
important ones.
Now, I dont really know why it is that way. I works the other way, too as
we can see in English. In fact, English is kind of in the midst of figuring
out what it wants.
Predicate nominative, no predicate nominative there is heated debate
about that :)

It was I/me who stole the eggs.

Some people will claim that I is correct and me is heresy because it is

predicate nominative here. Other people will say that this It was I -stuff
was invented by some 18th century Latin-hugging grammarians and that
English doesnt have a predicate nominative at all. I dont know whos
right and whos wrong but German goes all out on its predicate
nominative. In German we say all of the following things:

53

You become I.
He was I.
She am taller than I.

And never would anyone say me(mich) ever. And it doesnt matter
what the role is in a second part of the sentence. German keeps its
activities separated by commas and the grammar for one activity solely
depends on the activity itself not on other parts of the sentence. And
using a mich or mir instead of I would make the whole phrase almost
not understandable. It is really really a huge ass mistake.

It was me whom youve seen.

Es war mich, den du gesehen hast WRONG!!
Es war ich, den du gesehen hast.
It was I whom youve seen.(lit.)

Basically whenever there is an assignment like this going on German

uses double the predicate you know who.
All right.And thats it for the Nominative. It is the default case of all
things and beings but only the subject can be left in it. The rest has to
dress up in a different case as soon as it want to be part of a sentence. It
might be Accusative, it might be Dative and it might
be Genitive although the Genitive is so rare that it almost doesnt count
for a beginner and even less for someone who isnt learning German at
all oh hey Cpt. Obvious, there you are again. I have my name
because I say things that are obvious.
Yes, thanks, we know that. Can you also tell us a method to pick the
right case for all the stuff that is not allowed to remain in Nominative?
Cpt. Obvious? I asked you a question? Hmm hes gone.
HOW TO PICK THE RIGHT CASE ONE HUGE DIFFERENCE
Lets take the sentence we had earlier the one with lots of stuff in it.

[Meine Schwester] hat [ich] an [der Montag] [der Stift] auf [der
Tisch] gelegt.
On [Monday], my sister put [the pen] on [the table] for [I].

We already know that sister is fine in Nominative because she is the

subject and we also know that all the [rest] has to be in some other
54

cases. Now, if we want to find that out we need to distinguish between

two cases and no, this is not Cpt. Obvious again I mean that there
are two ways in which those words that stand for things or person can be
put into a sentence, or better a box some can be put in directlyor by
using a preposition that connects it. you know little words
like at, to or for. Which way works when for which element depends on
the verb. It has nothing to do with the real world roles.

I am awaiting a tea.
I am waiting for a tea.

So those are the 2 ways. They exist in English as well as in German but
sometimes English uses theprep-way when German uses the direct
way and vice versa.
Now, which way is used in German makes a tremendous difference how
a thing or person is put in.
Because there are 2 distinct set of case-rules for each way, heck, Dative
and Accusative even have a distinct core idea for each way and those
rules and ideas have NOTHING to do with each other. They are actually
contradictory in part. So the first thing you need to do is ask yourself
this: Is there a preposition involved. If so, you check the preposition
rules. If no, go for the other rules. And dont try to find a common
ground. You will fail. There is one aspect in which the 2 ways are really
100% contradictory. But well get to that.
Now, the preposition rule set has its difficulties but for the most part,
it is just brute force rules.

mit, bei, von, zu, aus, seit, ab (and 1652 rare ones) always
Dative
bis, durch, fr, gegen, ohne, um (and 543 rare ones) always
Accusative

And always means always. No questions asked. No deeper meaning. No

underlying logic. There is none. Just learn it and use it. There are also
some that need Genitive but those are kind of rare I couldnt even get
a hold of one for an example.
The tricky part about this set of rules are the prepositions that work with
both, Accusative and Dative. There is some logic and a core idea for
each case behind that but you have to think really abstract sometimes.
But it would be too much to get into that today so lets just move on.
The other set is for the stuff that is put in directly. And that is what well
55

focus on for the rest of this. We will ignore all the stuff that is behind
prepositions.

Meine Schwester hat [ich???] a[m Montag] [ein Stift???] auf [den
Tisch] gelegt.

We ignore Monday and table because they are preceded by a

preposition. We care about the case of the stuff put in directly. And that
depends surprise surprise mainly on the verb or what it stands for.
But for Genitive it is really just the verb.
GENITIVE
The Genitive case exists in English too and it is pretty obvious by its s.

Moms pancakes tastes complexity is unparalleled.

That is Genitive of mom, pancakes and taste... not of complexity.

Genitive expresses possession. But not everything indicating possession
is automatically a Genitive.

my car

My indicates possession but it is not Genitive. My is a possessive

pronoun and it doesnt have a Genitive form in English. In German, it
does.

mein Auto Nominative

meines Autos Genitive

German and English Genitive share the same idea but the dont share
the same mechanics. English marks the noun, German marks noun AND
article. The German Genitive element, so the person or thing who owns
something can be put before and after the possessed thing.

meines Fahrrads Rad

my bikes tire
das Rad meines Fahrrads
the tire of my bike

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And while the first version is totally okay in English most of the time, it
sounds super ancient and poetic in German. No one talks like that
anymore.

My IPhones battery sucks.

Meines IPhones Akku ist scheie. mein Knig.

This is just funny unless you need to make a call.

Der Akku meines Iphones

This is okay. But for daily purposes even this is a bit too fancy. German
has come up with quite a number of alternatives one of which pretty
much resembles the English of-approach.

Der Akku von meinem Iphone

(Mein IPhone sein Akku).

The second version is highly colloquial, grammatically wrong and funny

but the first one is super common and accepted in daily speech. Some
people have even given it a new case name (as a joke) the Vonative.
You might want to drop that in German class like.. Oh yeah, thats a
Vonnativ.Youre teacher might be really confused but then he or she will
find it funny and make you pass the exam.
And you should go with the Vonnativ. It is a save bet. It always works
and in quite a few occasions a real Genitive would sound a little scripted.
And what about the pan cake example? Can I really use 3 Vonnatives in
a row?

Die Komplexitt von dem Geschmack von den

Pfannkuchen von meiner Mutter

Well, it is maybe stylistically not the most beautiful thing ever said but 3
pure Genitives in a row is a little heavy too.

Die Komplexitt des Geschmacks der Pfannkuchen meiner

Mutter ist

Now that is true Genitive it hurts the eye as much as it hurts the brain
to build it. Seriously, the Genitive is the most difficult case of all in
German. Not the most difficult when it comes to understanding the
concept but the most difficult when it comes to putting it in practice. The
57

endings are the most complex,many nouns will carry endings and above
all you never know if it is even idiomatic to use it.
Some say that Genitive is dying out. That is not true. Genitive just
gradually switches jobs. It is a fancy case and it doesnt want to bother
with the every day crap like my dogs poo let the Vonnative do it or
some other weird ways.
Genitive focuses on higher things. Newspapers and books are full of it. It
connects important sounding nouns and whenever a new preposition is
born Genitive will be its nanny for the first few decades until Dative
takes over. I am not kidding. That happened to wegen. And it will
happen to anstatt.
If you want to write proper German you will have to learn the Genitive
eventually. But for a beginner it is definitely a waste of time. The
Vonnative.. oh god, I keep calling it that, please dont forget, its just a
joke name so the von-way can express all you need to express
about possession without making you sound stupid. So go for that and
let the Genitive slowly trickle into your system while you deal with more
important stuff.
Now, the one thing the von-way cant help you with is when the verb
demands Genitive. What? Verbs do that? Yes. Some do. For
instance harren or sich entsinnen. Never heard of them? Thats
because they are rare. I cant think of one verb you would REALLY need
in your active, daily vocabulary that wants Genitive.
And if you have one well, youll just have to learn the case with it. It is
not just sich entsinnen but sicheiner Sache entsinnen... which is a
kind of remembering by the way. There is no deeper sense why it is
Genitive and not a different case. It just grew that way.
All right and thats it for today. Well save the other two for next time. I
told you it would only be the boring stuff, didnt I :).
If you have any questions or suggestions about what weve said so far,
go ahead and leave me a comment. I hope you liked it and see you next
time. Either with part 2 or with noch... your call.
Wanna read right on about Dative and Accusative?
To give you a little inside into crazy German heres the pancake
example again this time with the highly colloquial alternative for
Genitive. It looks random but it is correct within its wrongness. Goethe
would have cried.
58

Meine Mutter ihr seine Pfannkuchen den ihr Geschmack ihm seine
Komplexitt ist unerreicht.

German Cases Explained part 2

Hallo ihr lieben
and welcome to the second part of our German is Easy Mini Series
German Cases Explained part 2
In part 1, which you can find here:
German Cases Explained part 1
we wasted time with an introduction and then we talked about the cases
nobody really cares about. The Nominative, which is the default case
that every language kind of has, and Genitive which expresses
possession for the most part. By the way, in the comments on that we
were talking a bit about when to use real Genitive and there are some
interesting points there. Ill add them to the post when the lazyness
wears off if. Oh will it ever.
Today, well look at Accusative and Dative and well find that Accusative
doesnt really mean much and Dative is receiving.
*spoile.. oh wait should have said that first.
And to avoid legal issues, heres a little warning:
We will NOT talk about Accusative and Dative after prepositions
Anything you learn about cases and their idea today does NOT
apply to cases after prepositions. Drawing connections can lead
to deep frustration and headache. Do it at your own risk.
All right. So last time weve seen that there are two ways we can put
things or persons into a sentence either directly or by using
a preposition. This is a pretty universal thing and is true for most if not
all languages. But which elements are put in in which way is totally
open. Quite a few language put in their local information directly. Finnish
even has a distinct case for going to, being there and coming
from. Sounds complicated but it is actually quite practical. Prepositions
can be quite an annoyance. Is it zur Schule, in die Schule or an die
59

Schule? I remember very well the problems I had back then when I was
a kid
Sooo, how was school today?
I dont now *sobb* I didnt know where to go, I went an but it wasnt
there
Awww dont cry honey, mommy will drive you there tomorrow okay?
But anyway so languages do things differently. Some use cases where
others use prepositions and vice versa. But there is one element (aside
from the subject) for which almost all languages use the direct way. I
am talking about the direct object. And that is closely related to
Accusative.
Accusative
You see, there are different kinds of activities. First of, there are activities
that you just do like sleeping, napping, dozing or Nike. The underlying
pattern is the most basic pattern for a sentence in German and English

I verb.

I can put in all kinds of boxes with additional information but I dont
have to.

I verb
fact]...).

(+ [when][where][why][with whom][despite what

Then, there are activities you do to something. like watching a

movie,moving a chair, chairing a meeting, meeting a friend or
uhm befriending a squirrel or uh.. erm and so on and so on.
The general pattern goes like this:

I verb [something or someone]

This blue box is the answer to What do I verb?, English calls it

the direct object and in English it is put in what is called the objective
case. What? Objective case? So Accusative is like the objective case?
Well no. Genitive aside, English has two cases. The subjective case is
like the German Nominative and it is used for the subject. The objective

60

case is used for all other things that are in a sentence, be they behind a
preposition or not.

I saw him with her behind them.

I is the subject, all the others him, her and them are not so they
are in objective case, but only him is the direct object here. So,
objective case is NOT Accusative. So what IS the Accusative then?
Well it is kind of the German case for the direct object. Whatever is
the direct object in English will be inAccusative in German. Not
always. But well get to that later.
Now, I know everybody is always looking to find out what the cases
mean, like what their core idea is. But to be frank, I dont think that it
makes much sense for Accusative. Sure it is pretty close to the direct
object of English or the Romance language. So we could assume that the
function is the same. And it is. But what is this function, anyway?
Sometimes you can read, that the direct objectexperiences the
action. English Wikipedia says the direct object is the one acted
upon. Okay. But how exactly is a woman who changes her dress
experiencing anything if I watch her from afar? How does that affect her?
Exactly. Not a bit. So why is it then that she got a restraining order
against m. oh wait that doesnt belong here I guess. Let me use a
different example how does a radio host experience your hearing him?
Or lets take another example. A philosopher explains the sense of life
to you whos the one making an experience? You? Well, grammatically,
it is the sense of life. It is the one experiencing the explaining. Sense of
life is the direct object.
What I am trying to say is that all those terms like experiencer or
acted upon make sense in the grammar world, they are helpful, but I
totally understand how they can be confusing if you take them as real
world terms. If it works for you, then fine, but if not lets just settle for
the very basic explanation that the function of the direct object is
simply the object in sentences with the following basic pattern

I verb something or someone.

Now, that doesnt really make for a catchy core idea of Accusative.
And as I said before I really think it there is one. There is no core
concept of accusative that would make sense in just the real world
without any grammatical abstraction. The way I see it, Accusative is
61

just the next best case. Nominative is the preset. Like you take a word
out of the dictionary and bamm it is in Nominative. And then, if
Nominative is already taken and you have no reason to do otherwise
well.. just use Accusative then. Itll probably be correct. Like the
English objective case the Accusative is much grammar and very
little content.

I see he.

We can understand that. There is no doubt as to what this means. Using

the objective case in English adds precisely nothing other than correct
grammar.

I see him.

Same for Accusative. It doesnt mean much in real world terms.

Genitive expresses possession and well soon see that Dative does
express something. But Accusative not really.
Its like this standard boring beer you can get anywhere. Sure, there are
different reasons imaginable for drinking it to get drunk, to have
something to sip while talking or because you have to order something
in a bar. But the reasons are not really relevant. They are boring. No one
will be like
Oh, I see youre drinking PBR, what an interesting choice. How come?
Its just normal . You cant drink nothing (that would be Nominative)
because its a bar but you have no specific idea what to drink either and
so you go for the standard like random house wine or said PBR.
And this is Accusative. You have to have a case but you have no special
content to communicate. Sure, this isnt exactly linguistically sound but
if you want to spare yourself delving too deep into grammatical
functions and definitions it works just fine.
So Accusative is the way to go for all those basic verbs that have
a direct object in English. And other than not being Nominative it
doesnt convey much real meaning.

I
see/hear/buy/write/want/have/love/eat/count/send/get somethin
g or someone.
62

Ich
sehe/hre/schreibe/will/habe/liebe/esse/zhle/schicke/bekomme e
twas oder jemanden.

Now does that always work?

Of course it doesnt. There are in total about 50 verbs for which it
doesnt work. Not too bad Id say. You could just learn those and use
Accusative for the rest. But lets take a look at Dative first before we get
to the exceptions.
As of now well go with this: Accusative doesnt mean much and is just
pure grammar and we use it whenever we have a sentences based on
this pattern.

I verb something
Ich verbe etwas

(+preposition stuff).
(+ prep stuff).

Dative
Now, Accusative has been quite a disappointment. There is no deeper
secret to it, no catchy idea. This is different for Dative and to find that
out it makes sense to look at another basic pattern for sentences. We
already had:

I verb.

which needs no case, and

I verb something.

which usually uses Accusative. The third one is

I verb something to someone.

or better yet, the rephrased version

I verb someone something.

Many verbs come to mind that fit this pattern to give, to explain, to
say... and the underlying idea is atransfer. Not transfer as in I move
somewhere but something is being moved from one entity to another
entity.
And whenever we are looking at a situation like this, in German the thing
being transferred is inAccusative and the receiver is in Dative.
63

Ich gebe dir ein Buch.

I send you a book.
Er schickt mir eine Mail.
He sends me an email.
Ich sage ihr meinen Namen.
I tell her my name.

Note that in English both entities, the item being transferred and the
receiver are just in objective case. What matters are the roles. And
Dative is the receiver. That is its core. Receiving something. Dative
receives. Thats also the name of a famous Goethe poem (he wrote it
when he was a student of German as a Native language)
Dative receives.
Every Day,
Margarete.
Every day
Dative I get it.
So nice.
Now, of course there doesnt have to be a physical object or an abstract
object like a name. We can also transfer pieces of information so there
is not always a direct object there.

Ich sage dir, wie es mir geht.

I tell you how I am.

Now, this transfer scenario is actually very broad and we have to take it
as an abstract concept rather than a literal one if we want it to help us.
For one thing, it can also be used for kind of negative transfers.

Ich klaue dir einen Stift.

I steal a pen from you.

In a way, the receiver receives -1 pen here, if that helps :). And to give
you a more abstract example

Ich glaube dir etwas.

I believe you something (lit)

64

It might be hard to see a transfer here, but if you say I am buying that
from you it becomes clear :). I take that from you as truth.
But there doesnt even have to be a actual transfer going on

Ich garantiere dir etwas.

I guarantee you something.
Ich lese dir etwas vor.
I read something out to you.
Ich prsentiere dir mein neues Fahrrad.
I present my new bike to you.

The Dative isnt really receiving a thing here it is more like an audience
for something. But still I think the idea of transfer shines through. By the
way this idea of being and receiving-audience nicely explains a few
very common uses of Dative without the Accusative. For example

Mir ist kalt.

You are not cold yourself as in a cold person. Youre an audience to your
environment and you perceive it as cold. You receive cold in a very
very abstract way and receive, perceive there
definitely ceiveinvolved :). And there are more examples.

Mir ist heute etwas lustiges passiert.

Today, something funny happened to me.
Berlin gefllt mir.
I like Berlin (Berlin is pleasing to me as an audience)
Mir scheint, als ob es bald regnet.
To me it seems as if it is going to rain soon.
Ist dir meine neue Frisur aufgefallen?
Has my new hairdo made an impression on you (kind of lit.)
Have you noticed my new hair do?

So this is the basic idea of Dative it is marks the receiver or

audience of something.
Now, I am sure quite a few have been silently asking themselves
So mir is like to me why doesnt he just say that.Well, that is not
wrong if you use that to help you remember Dative thats fine.
ButDative can also express for you and from you and even more
importantly, not every to you is automatically a dir.

I have to talk to you.

65

Ich muss dir reden. WRONG

Ich muss mit dir reden.
I come to you.
Ich komme dir. WRONG super WRONG
Ich komme zu dir.

Simply translation to someone as Dative will help you

nothing. Dative marks the receiver of in a (possibly abstract)
transfer: Someone gives/shows someone something. That is just not the
case for those verbs. I can tell you something but I cant talk you
something just as I cant come you something.
All right.
That was a lot of talking and I have already forgotten half of it and
counting. So lets maybe try and condense this down into a few easy to
follow guidelines and then list the exceptions :)
Cases a rough guide and exceptions.
We can boil down our findings as follows. The Accusative is the next best
case besides Nominative. It means nothing and it works for this pattern:

I verb something or someone (+ all kinds of preposition

stuff).

This covers many of our basic activities like seeing, eating,

reading and so on. and there are only about 50 exceptions in total.
Hooray so we could also say: just use Accusative if you have no reason
to use something else.
Whenever your verb wants, accepts or has 2 objects one will
be Accusative and one will be Dative. And with a little fantasy well
find that were usually looking at some kind of transfer.

I verb you (Dat.) something (Acc.).

And, since it is a common source of confusion of course you can also

be the receiver yourself.

I verbmyself something.

66

That ought to help you pick the correct cases for verbs that look like this
in the dictionary

sich etwas verben

Being a receiver or audience is also the main idea of the Dative. Thats
what the case expresses even if you see it outside of this transferstructure.
And sadly there are exceptions to all of that. One really big and mean
one is the verb fragen. It has 2 objects, it fits the pattern I verb you
something, there is even kind of a negative transfer going on and yet.. it
is double Accusative.

Ich frage dich etwas.

This is a really really huge exception. There are close to NO situations in

which youll see a double Accusative. It is always one Dative, one
Accusativer except for fragen. Dont ask me why.
And then there is the rule that something in I verb
something.needs Accusative. It does. For many basic every day verbs.
But there are verb that you cant fully understand. Some verbs just
arent looking for anything logical, like rules. They cant be predicted,
explained or negotiated with. Some verbs just want to watch the world
learn

I trust you.
Ich vertraue dir.

It is totally understandable if someone chooses Accusative. You is the

direct object, it is the only object in the sentence, it fits the I verb
someone-pattern, there is no one receiving anything. And still it
isDative.Is it annoying? Certainly. Does it make sense? No.

I need your help.

Ich bedarf deiner Hilfe. (rare)
Ich brauche deine Hilfe.

The second example is even better because it shows that content has
NOTHING to do with the case sometimes. Both verbs mean the same,
heck 99% percent of all be-verbs take Accusative in German and yet, it is
Genitive. There is no reason why bedrfen wants Genitive
67

and brauchen wants Accusative.

And those are verbs youll just have to accept. You dont have to sit
down and learn them all. Just pick them up along the way, like beautiful
flowers or like stinking piles of dog poo. The way you look at it will be
the way it feels :)
And I think thats it. That was my attempt at an explanation for the two
German cases that cause most of the problems. The Accusative means
nothing, its pure function and the Dative marks a receiver. That and the
two sentence patterns, and you should be able to get about 80% of all
case picks correct which will help you very little because you also need
to know the gender, but hey. Who cares. Getting a case wrong is not that
big of a deal after all and people will always understand you. So take
your time. Itll grow on you like the hair on my should wait too much
information.
I want to add an exercise here at some point but I dont have enough
time at the moment. So if anyone knows a good quiz online please
share. And if you have any other questions (which I am sure you have) or
if youre like What? Thats it? Thats your explanation? I didn not learn a
single new Thing you fraud as always just leave me a comment.
Reflections on reflexive
Hallo ihr alle,
und willkommen. Ja, ich fange mal in Deutsch an :). Warum auch nicht?
Schn oder? Garnicht so schwer zu verstehen. Vielleicht htt ich das
schon fter gemacht haben worden sein knnt okay that is not correct,
dont worry. I was just messing around. But I bet it was confusing. Oh
speaking of confusing, today well talk about reflexive oh god, what a
clumsy beginningmaybe I should go to that writers seminar in New
Zealand that might give me (wait for it) new zeal and ..haha oh
come on!. nothing? No smile? Man, this is going to be a tough
show oh speaking of tough, German has a lot of tough f wow, this is
so bad German has a lot of features that make it hard for students of
all levels to, well, like it. And if they do, it is probably a case of the
Stockholm Syndrome.
German?? They have 3 genders which they randomized and they make
me learn them. And they have 1000 ways to build the plural and they
feed me that, too. And it has cases oh god, the cases. They make me
choke. And German has one gazillion prepositions one bazillion of which
68

you need every day I its a great language. I I love it.

It is normal to feel that way. Well get treatment. Youll be okay.
Today, well talk about one of the lesser evils of German. It is not en par
with cases or plural but still, many people seem to have problems with
it. So today, well try to get our heads around
German Reflexive Verbs
Text books have chapters on them and courses spend time talking about
them and a lot has been said online about them. But there is actually lot
of confusion as to what reflexive verbs are.
And that is no wonder because for each language they work a little
differently or a little more. In Romance languages it makes a difference
for how the past is constructed and in Russian you add something at the
end of the verb.
So we will start with a look at how it works in English and then delve
into German.
But before we start, we need to have a quick look at the reflexive idea..
and an add campaign of theReflexive LTD captured that pretty nicely:

Reflexive

pissing against the wind since 1902.

They had one for women, too

Reflexive

peeing above a metro air vent since 1902.

Seriously though that is what most people understand as reflexive.

You do something and youre also the one it is done to. And now lets
look at English
Reflexive verbs in English or why there arent many
What is a reflexive verb in English. A common definition is that it is an
activity for which the agent and the patient are the same. Yeah
whatever. You pee. Wind blows. Pee on pants. End of story. This is what
the definition means.
Here are some examples

I see myself in the mirror.

The car drives itself.
You trust yourself.
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There is actually a broader definition that call all verbs reflexive for
which which the subject is also some kind of object be
it direct, indirect or after a preposition.

I
I
I
I

love myself.
give myself a kiss.
dream of myself, too.
will marry myself some day.

So, if we go by these definitions, to see, to drive, to trust, to

give are all reflexive verbs, right? Hmmm I dont know. Somewhere
online I read that the reflexive pronouns, so myself, yourself and the
like, are used with reflexive verbs WHAT??? So to see is a reflexive
verb and thats why I can usemyself with it? That doesnt make sense.
Doesnt that mean that like 90% of all verbs are reflexive because
I can use them that way? Or wait maybe they are just reflexive
verbs when they are used with a reflexive pronoun. So the reflexive
pronoun makes them reflexive. But does that mean we have a verbto
see and a verb to see oneself? Do they both have entries in the
dictionary? All that is really confusing and doesnt make much sense to
me.
I would suggest to call verbs that can be used in a reflexive way without
changing their meaning verbs. And save the name reflexive verb for
those verbs that are special in a way. That solves all those problems. To
see and to drive are just verbs, normal, everyday, labor union, 401k
having verbs. They can be used in many ways, context and sometimes
meanings and one of the contexts is reflexive. But they always mean
the same. Why should we call them reflexive verbs then. It is the same
verb. I mean, we dont call to go a past-verb just because we use it in
past.
Now, can all verbs be used in a reflexive context? No. For some it doesnt
work

I go myself.

That doesnt make sense or wait..it does

Should I go?
No, I go myself.

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But this myself is NOT a reflexive pronoun (it is called intensifying

pronoun here) and the situation is not reflexive. So, just because you see
a some-self somewhere doesnt mean that it is reflexive. You really have
to think of the underlying idea you know bladder emergency,
wind,stain.
Anyway so there are some English verbs that cant be used in a
reflexive manner
And then there are some very very some. that can ONLY be used in
a reflexive way. And those are the ones I would call reflexive verbs.
Because they are special. One example is to comport oneself. You
cant say

I comport someone or something.

And you also cant say

I comport.

You MUST say

I comport myself.

Not because it would add any information. If you can only ever comport
yourself, then the word is empty. It is just there because grammar wants
it so.
Other examples are to pride oneself or to content oneself and
maybe 4 or 5 more but thats it.
So the way I see it, is that English can use most of its verbs in a
reflexive context. And it has a few real reflexive verbs, that is, verbs
that ONLY work reflexively.
Official definitions are different. But who cares. I, Iself do not.
Lets look at German, because in Complicated it is more Germ wait I
mixed something up anyway
Reflexive verbs in German
When we look at the whole reflexive thing in German we come across 3
different cases no not THOSE cases :). We could say there are 3 groups
of verbs.

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The first group are the ones that work like most English verbs
so.. normal verbs that can be used reflexively without changing their
meaning.

Ich sehe mich.

Du siehst mich.
Ich wasche mich und mein Auto.
I wash myself and my car.

In German grammar books, those are often called unechte reflexive

Verben like phony or false reflexive verbs. This is a weird name
because there is nothing phony or false about them. When used in a
reflexive way,they totally express the idea of reflexive. I think they
should just be called verbs. Verbs that can be used in a reflexive
context. But Ive already ranted enough about that :).
Now whats interesting about this group is that German uses those
verbs much more often with a reflexive than English uses its
counterparts. And actually most languages do Spanish, French,
Russian but English is just like:
I am shaving myself ugh too long hey, hey context could you
come over have a job for you
Uhg AGAIN??? hey English you know what if you hadnt
rationalized so much you wouldnt be so dependent on oth
Ooooh whatever I am dominating! I have outperformed them all and
I have the most costumers worldwide. So, youre helping or what?
Ugh fine what is it?
So Ill just say Im shaving and youll do all the implications?
Like what like only for men and their beards? Or also for women
and their legs?
All of it. You can do it, buddy.
This is not how it works in German. You have to spell things out. Lets
take the word to change. In English you can change something or you
can just change. In German , you always ndern something. That
something can be your shirt, or it can be yourself. But you cannot
just ndern.

Tomorrow, I will change.

Morgen ndere ich. WRONG
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That doesnt sound complete and every German will be like What? What
do you change?.

Morgen ndere ich mich.

Examples like this are numerous.

Thomas and Maria kissed.

Thomas und Maria kssen. what? What do they kiss???
Thomas und Maria kssen sich. .. ohhhh okay... each other, I see.
(dont worry, well get to the pronouns later)

and even numerouser.

Ich drehe das Lenkrad.

I turn the stirring wheel.
Die Erde dreht sich.
The world turns.

I am being repetitive but Ill repeat anyway you drehen something.

That can be yourself. But you cannot just drehen.
So German uses its normal verbs in a reflexive way so much often
because grammar wants it. And it is similar for other languages like
Spanish or Russian. English is incredibly liberal with that kind of stuff.
Anywayare all those reflexive verbs? In my eyes, no. They are just
verbs that can be used in a reflexive context. and that was group 1.
Now we get to the second group, which is probably the most interesting
one. Those are the verbs that change their meaning when they are used
reflexively. This change can be just a nuance or it can be complete like
a TOTAL change. Or it is somewhere in between and it is up to your mind
yoga skills whether you find it the meanings different or not.
Lets do some examples. A very close pair in my eyes
is entscheiden and sich entscheiden. Entscheidenmeans to
decide and sich entscheiden means to decide. The difference is
subtle. Sich entscheidenalways has a personal component. Suppose
someone comes up to you and asks you to make a decision about
something you are not personally involved in like Should I use
Flamingos or Gibbons as a background for my phone? then you would
just entscheiden. If you cant decide whether you want beer or wine,
then you need to sich entscheiden. The sich makes it more personal.
Managersentscheiden a lot. Women on a shopping spree
73

entscheiden sich a lot. or .. they dont. Either way the two words
are so close that we could actually put them in group 1.
Lets look at one with a bigger difference. Aufhalten. Among other
things, it means to stop because a language can never have enough
words for to stop ;) but it can also mean to hold up ;)
Sich aufhalten can mean to hold up oneself. That would be the
group 1 thing you just use the verb in a reflexive context. But sich
aufhalten also means to linger, to stay, to be at a place.

Ich halte dich im Park auf.

I stop you in the park.
Ich halte mich im Park auf.
I sojourn/stay in the park.

But are the two meanings really that different? Doesnt holding up
someone imply that that person stays at a place? The reflexive version
has just a different focus than the normal one, but that is always the
case.

I close the door.

I close the deal.

Also here, the words are not EXACTLY the same the same idea taken
from different perspectives.
So if we want to we could also put (sich) aufhalten into group 1. I
guess it also makes sense to think ofsich aufhalten as a verb of its
own. Then I would call this a reflexive verb because it is special in that
it only means what it means when used WITH the reflexive pronoun.
Anyway no matter whether you think of them as separate verbs or not,
it can definitely help to try and draw a connection between the normal
version and the reflexive one.
Now, I said that there are ones where the meaning change is complete,
so lets look at one of those too.

Er schickt es nicht.
He doesnt send it.

Schicken means to send. And used in a reflexive context it means to

send oneself. But there is another meaning

Es schickt sich nicht.

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It is inappropriate.

That is clearly something else. It can be explained when you look back at
the history of the verb, but nowadays the second version totally like a
verb of its own. a reflexive verb.
And thus we get to the third group verbs that can ONLY be used with a
self reference. Remember? English had only like 5 of those.
German has more way more, and many common ones among
them. One example is sich beeilen. It means to hurry up but in
German you cant use it without a self reference.

Ich beeile WRONG

Ich beeile meinen Bruder WRONG
Ich beeile mich... correct.
I hurry up.

There is NO logical reason why there is a self reference. It just has to be

there.It is part of the verb pretty much. Like a prefix.There is no
verb beeilen as there is no verb to clude. There is just conclude and
sich beeilen. And other than prefixes, this purely grammatical self
reference doesnt even carry real meaning. It is just part of the verb. In
books these verbs are often called echt reflexiv ( genuine reflexive) as
opposed to the phony ones we had earlier. Had we called the other ones
just verbs, then we could call these ones reflexive verbs which would
make sense to me because the reflexiveness is their essence but
jargon is jargon and I cant just change it I guess.
There is also something you cant change.. the fact that you have to
learn these reflexive verbs by heart. hehe that was mean but it is
true. There is no way around it. Lets take another example to catch a
cold.

Ich erklte mich.

I catch a cold.

There is no logical reason for the the self reference other than it just
happened that way. In a parallel universe it might be.

Ich erklte.

and that would make just as much sense. But its not. It needs a self
reference.Period. This need is in fact so strong, every German thinks of it
75

the verb as sich erklten not just erklten with an optional sich
the sich is part of the verb. So learn sich erklten... not erklten.
Sound like a lot of work but that is the bitter truth.
Now an interesting question is, why? Why does German have so many
weird verbs that essentially have no meaning without a self reference. I
dont know for fact but I think the answer might have to do with what
weve already seen the tendency that verbs that need an object
always NEED an object. And while not true for all the verbs it is
especially true for verbs with prefixes. And if you take a look at the list
of real reflexive verbs in German Ill add a link below, the ones that have
the reflexive built in, then youll find that many of them are prefix-verbs.
For instance beeilen. or erklten.
All right. Lets recap. Just like in English, or in any other language I
guess, you can use many German verbs in a reflexive context. In
grammar books those are called unecht reflexiv, a misleading name
because they totally stay true to the reflexive idea.
Then, there is a bunch of verbs that change their meaning if used in a
reflexive context. For them, it is up to you if you want to see them as
separate verbs or as one facet of the normal verb. The better you are at
mind yoga, the easier it becomes. Some sources file those under group 1
but in high grammar they are actually filed under group 3. Me
personally, I file my nails.
The third group, called group 3 okay, that was obvious so, those are
verbs that dont exist without a self reference. The self reference is like
a prefix without meaning and is often just there for grammars sake. In
grammar books they are called echt reflexiv. Those are the ones you
need to learn and accept as they are.
mir, mich, sich whats up with
Cool. So now that we know about what types of reflexive there are, lets
take a look at the reflexive pronouns the words that are the self
reference. In English, it is pretty simple. You just add -self or -selves to
the personal pronoun and you got it. Sometimes, when, there are several
people involved, youll have to use each other or one another but thats
it.
In German, the reflexive pronouns are pretty much the same as the
personal pronouns. We do this:

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Du siehst mich (You see me)

Ich sehe mich ( I see me.)
You wash you.
We wash us.

That is pretty cool, actually because we can just use the things we
always use. The only difference is the third person so he she it and
they. For all those, the reflexive pronoun is sich. Now, why do we have to
have an extra pronoun here? Wouldnt it be easier to just also use the
personal ones? Well, yes it would be easier, but it wouldnt work. You
see, if I say me.. then who could I possibly refer to other than myself. Me
is always clear and so is you in a given situation. Him is not clear. Him is
not clear. Neither is her or them. There are millions of third persons out
there and if there are 2 guys in a room either one can be him.

Mike likes him.

Cant context clear this up for us? Well, sometimes yes.. but not
always and context is very busy with English anyways :) so it makes
sense to have a special reflexive pronoun for the third person.

Mike mag sich.

Mike likes himself this is clear now
Mike mag ihn.
Mike likes him (some other guy oh crap there are 3 guys
uh hey, context uh do you have a minute?).

The cool thing about sich is that it works for all of them masculine,
feminine, neuterand even the plural.

Thomas mag sich.

Maria mag sich.
Das Kind mag sich.
Die Menschen mgen sich.

So this sich is the only true reflexive pronoun German has and it is so
iconic that even indicates reflexiveness itself just look in a
dictionary the default forms of reflexive verbs are sich
something sich beeilen, sich rgern, sich erklten.
If you want to use such a verb then you just have to insert the
appropriate self reference for sich
And this we get to the one last question we have to talk about. What
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about the whole mir-thing?

We know that German has cases so ich can become mich (Accusative)
at times and mir (date-if) at other times. Mir, dir and so on often (not
always) communicate the same as to me, to you

Du gibst mir ein Buch.

You give a book to me.
Du trumst von mir.
You dream of me.

And of course those can also be used in a reflexive way.

Ich give mir Zeit.

I give time to me. (lit.)
I give myself time..
Ich trume von mir.
I dream of myself.

Are those reflexive verb then? Well, based on the definitions in English
and in German, the answer is yes. And at least they are verbs used
reflexively. But as a matter of fact,there are even real reflexive
verbs that need Dative. you know the verbs that dont make sense
without the self reference. One example is sich Mhe geben.

Ich gebe mir Mhe.

I give toil to myself (lit.)
I make an effort.

So if anyone ever tells you something is not reflexive because it

is mir and not mich that is not correct. Whether something is reflexive
or not has NOTHING to do with whether there is mir or mich.
So.. things with mir can be reflexive too.
And Germans have a soft spot for such mir-reflexives. We use them all
the time, even if they are redundant.

Ich kaufe mir eine Pizza.

I by myself a pizza.

This is even remotely understandable as I could theoretically buy a pizza

for someone else. And English similar things sometimes.

We got ourselves a cat.

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But we also say this:

Wir gucken uns einen Film an.

We watch a movie.

This self reference makes NO sense. You cannot watch someone else a
movie.

I watch you a movie. uh nope

In a discussion somewhere here (I dont remember where), a user

mentioned that also this exists in English.

We watch ourselves a movie.(lit.)

I think someone in Oxford just shed a tear. In German this is pretty much
standard, though. People talk that way all the time. Nor does it sound
bad in anyway. Without the mir these things would sound a little dry.
The mir or dir or uns makes it sound cozy. Thats what it feels like to
me sometimes. Like little Hobbits who got themselves some nice pipeweed.
In fact we love it so much that we sometimes even prefer it over
saying my in particular in combination with body parts. In German you
dont say

I wash my hands.

you say

Ich wasche mir die Hnde.

I wash (to) myself THE hands.

You can say

Ich wasche meine Hnde.

Its not wrong. But it sounds mechanical. You could use that in a novel if
someone gets home in some kind of catatonic daze.

Ich komme nach Hause and schliee die Tr. Ich wasche meine
Hnde, gehe in die Kche. Ich ffne eine Dose Bohnen und schtte
den Inhalt auf einen Teller. Dann setze ich mich an den Tisch. Und
dann weine ich.
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I come home and close the door. I wash hands, go into the kitchen.
I open a can of beans and pour the content onto a plate. Then I sit
down at the table. Then, I cry.

Thats how life would be without our comfy mir :).Other examples for
this mir-usage are sich die Zhne putzen (instead of brushing ones
teeth), sich den Arm brechen (instead of break ones arm) or sich
das Gesicht eincremen (instead of put cream on ones belly). And
there are more. And for all of them, this version sounds sooooo much
better than the respective version with my.
All right.
Now, this whole mir-thing doesnt always work. We dont say

Ich lese mir ein Buch.

or

Ich esse mir eine Pizza.

I dont think there is a real rule though. It is just language in use. Youll
pick it up over time.
So this was the mir-aspect of reflexive. There is one last thing to say
about it and that is some good news. Yeay. The reflexive
pronoun sich actually covers both cases. It is always the same gender,
case, plural there is just one reflexive sich for all of them.

Ich sehe mich.

I see myself.
Sie sieht sich.
He sees himself.
Ich kaufe mir ein Buch.
I my myself a book.
Er kauft sich ein Buch.
He buys herself a book.

And I think thats it for to what?.. oh THAT oh thats not a mistake.

Hes cross gender, you know
Anyway, so this was a run through reflexive in German. We didnt tackle
ALL there is to say but I hope you got an impression of whats going on
and what the terminology is.
German uses a lot of its normal verbs in a reflexive context. Then, it has
some verbs that change their meaning when used that way. And there
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are quite a few verbs that dont even work without the self reference.
Those and the changlings are the ones I would call reflexive verbs but
official definition calls everything with a reflexive pronoun a reflexive
verb.
English can use a lot of its verbs in a reflexive way, but often prefers to
just dont say an object altogether. And English has only a handful of
verbs that dont work outside a reflexive context.
Now, if I have to write reflexive one more time, Ill throw up on my
keyboard. Ill add a link where you can find a list with some phony re
oh that was close a list with examples for the groups but there are
mistakes on there. In fact, there are mistakes EVERYWHERE when it
comes to naming examples. Even in the fat 1300 pages grammar
reference book of the Duden. A book so heavy, I gravitate toward it
hahaha but they claim that schmen cant be without well, you
know the whole sich-thing and that is just not true. So when it
comes to reflexiv.. oh no oh no, its too la..asdgiasdbiaagsghabsdb..
shdihe7hw97hdwpapannasjl8cpgc7g.. . .. . . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. oh
god, gross beans all over my keyboard if you have questions or
suggestions, leave me a comment. And if you know how it works in your
mother tongue. go right ahead and tell us :)
I hope you liked it and see you next time oh I soo need to clean up.

Learn German Online German Past Tense

Hi everyone,
and welcome to our German is Easy- Learn German Online Course.
Today, well start talking about the past tense in German which is, at
least in my humble opinion
The Most Important Thing Ever
Thats right. I think it is that crucial. Now you may say Oh pshhhhhh
past shmast I live in the here and now man, the present . Why
should I bother with past? Id rather learn how to hold conversation and
speak fluently can you do a post on that?
Well fair enough the present tense is useful. Im sure youre doing all
kinds of things right now like reading, sitting, breathing in, transpiring,
digesting and anticipa
81

But this is NOTHING compared with what you have already done today,
and even nothinger when you look back at the past months. The thing
is you can study all kinds of things
like cases or prepositionsor genders or vegetable names you will
NOT be able to hold even the easiest normal conversation without the
past tense.
And while that is true for pretty much any language, it is turbo-true for
spoken German because the past tense has such deep an impact on
German sentence structure. In English you can often still understand the
gist even if you dont know anything about past.

I
I
I
I

drink a coffee.
drank a coffee.
go home.
went home.

Ok the second example doesnt really illustrate my point since present

and past dont have much in common there. But compared to the
standard German past used in 73,1 * % of all spoken conversation
(*number made up, may differ from actual number), the go-wentsentences are virtually twins.
Not so in spoken German.

Ich
Ich
Ich
Ich

trinke einen Kaffee.

habe einen Kaffee getrunken.
gehe nach Hause.
bin nach Hause gegangen.

So German past is something you really should dedicate a lot of

energy to and make sure you got this automatized BEFORE you worry
about all the other stuff.
Trust me itll be tremendously helpful and not only because you can
say things in past but also because the forms youll learn will help you
trace back an incredible amount of adjectives and nouns to their core
a basic verb. Here is proof.

der Marktstand (the market stand)

identical to the past of stehen (to stand):

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Ich stehe auf. (I get up)

Ich stand auf. (I got up)
Ich bin aufgestanden. ( I got up)

der Zug (the train)

similar to the past of ziehen (to pull)

Ich ziehe. (I pull.)

Ich zog. (I pulled.)
Ich habe gezogen. (I pulled.)
So in this one and the following episodes of this past mini series you
will learn everything you need to know about the past tense. Today well
start with a look at some general facts about German past andbluh bluh
owing posts we willzoom inand learnhowtoactuallybuibluh bluh and so
on and so on lets start already.
Past tense in German
There are 2 simple facts you need to know in order to adequately talk
about the past in German. First of, everything was more good (even the
grammar). And secondly, everything was cheaper. Take my grandfathers
IPhone. He got the JFK-Edition back in 1965 for as little as 10 and you
know what. it works just fine and he even used it to knock down parts
of the Berlin wa what? Oh I am being stupid again? oh youre right
Im sorry.
Here are the real facts. Firstly, there are types of past in jargon they
are called predatorand adequate or was is preterit and persomethingIm not sure.
Anyway I will call them spoken past and written past. Every verb
has either form. So far this setup is no different from English with
the present perfect and the simple past. And dont tell me that
present perfect is in fact present tense with perfect aspect it talks
about events of the past, so to my German language brain it is just past.
German doesnt have the concept of aspect.
Anyway the structures of German and English past forms do resemble
one another.

I saw a bird.
Ich sah einen Vogel.
I have seen a bird.
83

Ich habe einen Vogel gesehen.

But thats where the commonalities end. The German spoken past may
look a somewhat similar to the English present perfect at times but
the usage is totally different.
The thing is this which form of German past to use does NOT, I repeat,
NOT depend on the content or information you want to get across. It
rather depends on HOW you get the information across and it also
depends on the actual verb. Here are some examples. Thus what is
present perfect in English can translate to either form in German.

I have been to Paris.

can be translated to either of the following, depending on the situation

or personal preference of the speaker.

I war in Paris
Ich bin in Paris gewesen.

And consequently this:

I was in Paris.

can also have either version as translation. It depends on the mode of

language if you will.

He ordered a tea and began reading the newspaper.

Er bestellte einen Tee und fing an, die Zeitung zu lesen.
Er hat einen Tee bestellt und dann angefangen, die Zeitung zu
lesen.

The first version is appropriate for a novel or an essay while the second
version sounds fine in actual spoken German.
And that is the very reason why I call that form of past the spoken past.
With a few exceptions it is the form used for spoken German and that
absolutely does include any writing that is kind of spoken language
written down like SMS, E-mails, letters, chats, blogs, diarrhea .. oh I
mean diary so whenever you write as if you talk to someone, that
qualifies as spoken. And in spoken German you ought to use spoken
past.
Now, there are 2 exceptions to that. A small number of verbs
like haben, knnen or wollen is always using the written past... not
84

because they dont have a spoken form remember every verb has
either form. And also not because they are fancy modal verbs. Germans
are simply used to it that way. Using the other way sounds weird.
Besides those written-past-only-verbs there are a few others like finden,
wissen or geben for which both forms are used in spoken German. For
some the choice depends on the content for others it is just personal
preference but well look into that in detail later on.
So think of the spoken past as THE past. Learn how to build that and
use it. And learn the few written-past-only-verbs as exceptions there
are maybe about 15 or so so not too much.
Dont sit down and learn the written past for all verbs. It is a waste of
time for a beginner. You will NOT need it. The only occasion requiring you
to have solid command of the written past for a verb likefahren (to
drive) is if you want to write a novel. Or is you want to sounds like youre
stage acting.

Wie oft fuhrst du diesen Winter Ski?

This is what Google Translator translates it to

How many times have you went skiing this winter?

Well close enough now, this is what it actually should translate to if

you want to conserve the tone and feel.

And so I shall inquire of thee on how many occasions thou have

indulged in the amusement of skiing

Using the written past in spoken German doesnt make you sound smart
and certainly it wont make you sound like a native.
So a quick recap and then were done for today.
There are 2 forms of past in German the spoken past and
the written past. The spoken past is used in spoken German and
spoken-like writing for about 98 percent of all verbs. The other 2 percent
use thewritten past also in spoken.
With the exception of said verbs, the written past is only ever used in
real novel or newspaper writing. So unlike in English the 2 past forms
in German DO NOT differ in meaning nor should they be taken as
indication which form to use in German.

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You can use either form in either situation it might just sounds awfully
weird because it is against what people are used to.
Alright so next time we will learn how to build the spoken past for all
verbs and since every good show needs a cliffhanger, we will also find
out just what is the terribly shocking secret Marvin the Mole had been
hiding from his mole friends and no he is not a mole-ester
If you have questions or suggestions just leave me a comment. I hope
you liked it and see you next time.

German Past Tense 2 the Spoken Past

Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German is Easy Online Course.
And today well continue to look at the German past. Lets quickly recap.
There are 2 forms of past: the spoken past and the written past. Every
verb has either form but which one is used depends on 2 things: which
verb are we talking about and in which mode of language is it used.
Luckily 99,8 percent of all verbs do follow the same pattern they use
spoken past in spoken language and written past in written language as
in novels. Only a few verbs use the written past also in spoken language.
Using the spoken past for those would sound awkward. Anyway part 1
talks in all detail about this and if you havent read it then you should
read it I mean of course listen to the mp3.doc here.
So Today we will deal with the spoken past and to get started, here is
an example:

Ich habe mir gestern einen neuen Schlauch fr mein

Fahrrad gekauft.
I bought a new inner tube for my bike yesterday.
Audio Player

As we can see we need 2 things for the spoken past: a helper verb and
what I call the ge-form of the verb. Now youre like Gee what form??
so lets talk about this first and find out how it is built and also WHY it is
built that way.
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The ge-form
In official grammar-jargon the ge-form is called past party symbol. It
is not entirely clear to me why it is called that but I have to say that it is
a surprisingly modern sounding name in the otherwise so Latin-heavy
linguistic terminology. Unfortunately, it sounds too much like past
participle and this might be confusing so we will call it the ge-form. Ok
seriously, the name past participle is actually one of the grammatical
terms worth knowing and it is a really tremendously useful form. In
German it is used for the spoken past.

Ich habe ein paar Eier gekocht.

I have boiled some eggs.
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It can be an adjective.

Ich mag gekochte Eier lieber als Rhrei.

I like boiled eggs better than scrambled egg (lit.)
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And it is also used for passive.

Die Eier werden gekocht.

The eggs are being boiled.
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So you can do a lot with this form. And this is not only the case in
German. The past participle is equally useful in many other languages
including Finnish and the rules how to build this form is one of the first
things that I look up when I learn a new language. By the way if youre
wondering what thepast participle is in English: it is the third form of
this 3-form verb scheme

go went gone
see saw seen
download downloaded downloaded

Alright I will call it ge-form from now on because it is just a little more
intuitive how is it done in German? Well the standard rule is simple:

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remove the en-ending of the verb, add a ge in the beginning and a t at

the end. And sometimes you have to remove the umlaut.

machen (to make)

kaufen (to buy)
knnen (to be able to)

ge + mach + t
ge + kauf + t
ge + konn + t

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Now, before the 15th century, the spoken past didnt exist. It was then,
that people started inventing it for whatever reason. The past
participle back then had no ge yet. The ge actually used to be a
normal non-separable prefix just like ver or ent. The meaning of
the ge as a prefix was very broad and I cant really wrap my mind
around it but it did have of a notion of completion. So, just as Germans
started to use the previously unheard of spoken past they also started
adding the ge to the past participle of basic verbs that didnt maybe
just to give them said notion of completion. Over time the ge-form
developed as a rule and the original prefix-meaning of ge almost
disappeared. It is still visible in words like gefrieren (to freeze)
or gelingen (to turn out as a success).

Das Wasser gefriert.

The water is freezing.
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Das Projekt gelingt.

The project turns out a success.
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So the ge-form is somewhat of a coincidence and it could have been

another prefix as well. The main thing it does anyway is adding an extra
unstressed easy to pronounce syllable to the word. Like an up beat in
music. It gives the following stress more impact because it had build up.

ge kauft
dit DUNNNNt
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Kids hear and produc e this rhythmical change before they actually
realize the ge. They say things like:
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Ich bin hin ne-falln

I fell down.
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Mamma hat die Tr auf-fe-macht.

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Keep this rhythm aspect in mind. Well get back to it laterrrrr. Alright so
adding ge in front and t to the end is the default way to construct
the ge-form of a verb and this rule applies for a large part of all German
verbs but there are exceptions. Of course. The bad thing is that the
irregular forms are the ones you will use most in daily conversation so to
you as a beginner it will seem like EVERY verb has an irregular ge-form.
There are 2 main deviations of the rule. Some verbs end in en instead
of t.

essen (to eat)

ge + g + ess +en (the second g
is ust a filler so as to not have double e)
lassen (to let, to leave)
ge + lass + en
geben (to give)
ge + geb + en
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The second thing that makes irregular forms irregular is a change of the
stem-vowel, with occasional adjustments of the surrounding letters
and boy oh boy are there possibilities.

nehmen (to take)

genommen
ziehen (to pull)
gezogen
riechen (to smell)
gerochen
denken (to think)
gedacht
trinken (to drink)
getrunken
wissen (to know)
gewusst
kennen (the other, different to know) gekannt
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So is there a system that helps with this? Well for a systematic

approach if you want you can look into the whole over-hyped weak verb
strong verb nonsen uhm theory (which no German knows about).
That wont save you from having to learn for EACH verb whether it is
weak or strong and which vowel-change happens (there are half a dozen
tables for this). I think the benefit of those additional very abstract rules
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t be very marginal and I would recommend to just accept it

as random and learn the ge-forms by constant repetition. I mean they
are ones you will see all the time in the beginning anyway. I will give you
an exercise at the end of this post. There are 2 rules of thumb that I can
give you however if there is a vowel change in English (see-sawseen) there is a fair chance that it is irregular in German too. But regular
English doesnt imply regular German. And then, if there is a vowel
change in German there is a good chance for it to end with -en. But not
always. Bottom line of this most German verbs have a regular geform and they will look like this

verben geverbt

Many of the most important verb have irregular forms, stem change,
-en-ending or both and you should just learn those without trying to
make too much sense of it. But learn them you should. Anyway if you
cant think of a ge-form or you have actually never seen it before
then: Use the Rule!!!

Ich habe gedenkt.

This is wrong but every German can understand it and it is better to just
say this with confidence than to stop and search for the correct form.
gedenke.. no gedank uh..gedunken??? Instead of interrupting the
conversation for half a minute and turn your statement into an unrelated
language question just say it wrong! It is fine; no one will laugh. The
other person will probably find it cute. And then later that night you will
get the chance to find out more about the German crot.. uh culture while
having hot steaming se uh servings of coffee (oh my that was close).
So when in doubt just say it wrong and when the other person corrects
you, repeat the corrected version so as to train your brain. The geformshave to come out automatically and they will. Just give it some
time and make an effort learning. Alright now before we can get to the
helper verb we need to talk about another thing.
Ge-form and separable prefixes
Many German verbs consist of a basic verb like nehmen and one of our
1.762.431* prefixes (* number is an estimate by a level A1 student). And
as you may know there are weakly linked and strongly linked prefixes (if
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you need to brush up on that read this).

Now lets deal with weakly linked verbs first. Their ge-form looks as
follows:
prefix + ge-form of the basic verb

Ich habe mein Kind vom Kindergarten abgeholt.

I picked up my child from the kindergarten.
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Ich bin am Montag umgezogen.

I moved on Monday (to a new flat).
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Ich habe den Herd ausgemacht.

I have turned of the stove.
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Ich habe mein Bier noch nicht ausgetrunken.

I havent finished my beer yet.
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And now you ask .. whyyyyyyyy? Why isnt

it geaustrunken and geabholt? Why do I have to fit the ge in the
middle of the word? Well, this actually makes perfect sense and it is an
example for a principle that you will see over and over in German the
second to last jump. You know that if your verb has more than one part
in German the first part goes in position 2 and all the rest goes to the
end of the clause.

Ich mache den Herd aus.

I turn of the stove.
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So here our verb consist of the

parts mache and aus because ausmachen has a weak link, which
breaks easily. Now, if we want to put this into spoken past we need to
introduce a helper verb in this casehaben. Haben now
kicks mache out of position 2 while slapping a ge to it. So we have

Ich habe den Herd aus.

and a kind of homeless gemacht

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Now where does this gemacht go? It goes to the very end of course.
Note, that I am not touching anything else in the sentence. Nothing
moves except for machen.

Ich habe den Herd aus

gemacht. becomes
Ich habe den Herd ausgemacht.

And it is just by convention that it is now again written as one word. As if

there is magnetic force between aus and macht. I dont want to get too
much into that right now but this ausmachen-example is not much
different than this:

Abwaschen macht mir Spa.

Doing dishes is fun to me (lit).
I enjoy doing dishes.
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Spa machen is never written as one word and yet it is kind of a fixed
expression. Now if we put this in past we get

Abwaschen hat mir Spa gemacht.

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Just as before the haben kicked the machen from position 2 and turned
it into the ge-form. Gemachtthen had nowhere to go so it goes where
all the verb leftovers go to the end. It is not written as one word this
time but the reason is simply a convention. Sometimes even Germans
dont know what to do.

Ich habe viele Leute kennengelernt.

Ich habe viele Leute kennen gelernt.
I met many people.
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Both versions are correct according to out current writing law because
there are arguments for and against writing it as one word. So as you
can see, having the ge between the weakly linked prefix and the rest of
the basic verb is completely natural while geabholt wouldnt be. And to
bring back the idea of rhythm a separable prefix is always stressed
even more than is the stem syllable.

AUF mach en
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MIT bring en
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Having the ge in between yields a nice stressed-unstressed-stressedpattern something very common for German.

AUF ge MACHT
DUNN dit DUNNN
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The other version would be

ge-AUF-MACHT
dit DUNN DUNN

and that is just not feeling as smooth and groovy. So .. ge in the middle
makes sense logically and on top of that it sounds nice :).
Ge-form and non-separable prefixes
Now lets move on to the strongly linked prefixes the ones that dont
split.

Ich verkaufe mein altes Handy.

I sell my old sell-phone (pun intended).
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The spoken past of this is:

Ich habe mein altes Handy verkauft.

I sold my old cell-phone.
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Or some other exaples

Thomas hat Marias Geburtstag vergessen.

Thomas forgot Marias birthday.
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Die Werbung hat nicht zuviel versprochen.

The ad has not promised too much.
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Ich habe gestern einen 3-Jahres-Vertrag unterschrieben.

I signed a 3 year contract yesterday.
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Thomas hat den Text auf Deutsch bersetzt.

Thomas has translated the text into German
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The glaring question here is why is there no ge??? Well I dont

exactly know but here is my theory. Unlike the strongly linked ones the
non-separable prefixes are never stressed.

ver GESS en
ent SCHEI den
ver KAUF en
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A direct comparison:

ver SCHREI ben (prescribe)

AUF schrei ben (write down)
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And an even morer, directer, comparisoner (is that right??):

um STEL len
UM stel len
place/setting)
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(surround for instance police a building)

(put from one place/setting to another

So for the non-separable verbs we already have this groovy up beat

feeling that the ge added to the other verbs.

dit DUNNN (dun)

We have also established that the ge used to be a non-separable prefix

too and it had a meaning, which it just lost over the centuries. So I can
see why people back then would not add a prefix with a meaning to
another strongly linked prefix with a different meaning that would have
been confusing back then. And it is not needed for this nice geform rhythm after all. Lets look at this in practice one again, with the
stress indicated by like THIS (and blinking).
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Die Polizei hat das Gebude umSTELLT (dit DUNNN .. nice

dramatic finish)
The police has surrounded the building.
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Ich habe meine Uhr auf Sommerzeit UMgeSTELLt (DUNN dit
DUNNN just epic)
I set my watch to summer time.
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As I said before, this is just my personal theory so if you happen know

anything about this, please share it with us here. Now, what about verbs
that have a separable prefix AND a non-separable prefix? What? Oh you
didnt know those existed? Oh I am soooo sorry :) they do

Erst wollt eich einen Kaffee, aber ich habe mich umentschieden.
Ich nehme Tee.
First I wanted a coffee, but then I reconsidered. I go for tea.
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Thomas hat 3 Karten fr die Oper vorbestellt.

Thomas has reserved 3 tickets for the opera.
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Ich habe meine Wohnung untervermietet.

I sublet my flat.
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I think you get it without further explanation

So wow that was a lot already. Lets quickly summarize all of it.
if the verb has a separable prefix the ge is between prefix and the rest
(aufgemacht, eingekauft, vorgestellt)
if the prefix is not separable then there will be no ge. Just the prefix and
the ending
(verstanden, verkauft, bestellt)
And I should probably also mention: if you know the ending and vowel
change of a basic verb this will be the case for ALL prefix versions.
For denken we have dacht as a stem

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Ich habe nachgedacht.

I have done some thinking.
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Ich habe das bedacht.

I did take this into consideration.
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What did I take into consideration you ask? Well this

One more exception
There is one group of verbs that has no prefixes and doesnt take a ge
anyway all the ones ending in ieren. Those are somehow all based on
Latin and I am sure you understand many of them without having seen
them before.

fotografieren, probieren, transportieren, echauffieren,

parlieren, kopieren
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The ge-form on those should actually be called the -form because

they just get a t at the end and thats it.

Ich habe den Baum fotografiert.

I have taken a picture of the tree.
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Ich habe das nicht kapiert.

I didnt understand that.
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And again this begs the following question: why???? We could assume
that the ge-system developed before the Germans got in touch with the
Roman language but this is not very likely because German is very quick
with inventing ge-forms for all kinds of imported words.

Ich habe dein Foto geliked (we dont know how to spell this
yet here a debate )
I have liked your picture (as in: on Facebook).
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Ich habe gestern mit meiner Mutter geskyped.
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Ich habe mich eingeloggt.

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Where were we coming from? Oh right why dont the Latin verbs have
a ge? So the reason is not, that they came into the German language
too late. But rhythm is the key again. The main stress for those verbs
is ALWAYS on the ier syllable.

fotogra-FIEren
ko PIE ren
individuali- SIE-ren
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So compared to the average basic German verb ( HAben) , all the stuff
before IE is kind of one looooong non-separable prefix and it doesnt
make sense to add a ge to it. After ge a German expects a syllable with
a strong stress. For the ieren-words this wouldnt be the case. So that
makes it weird sounding andge feels out of place there. This is different
for those English words we had earlier. They do have an emphasized
syllable right after the ge and thats why it is so easy and natural for a
German native speaker to do it that way. So I hope you get an
impression of how important rhythm is to German and possibly to any
language. Grammar rules are nice and all but people talk in a way that
feels right and rhythm plays a huge role there. Ok so now we know
everything about the ge-form all we need to do is to pick the right
helper verb.
Haben or sein pick the right helper
This question seems to bug many students of German but it really is not
that hard to answer. The helper verb is either haben or sein. This can
be also seen in Roman languages but the rules when to use which are a
little different. Basically you must to use sein whenever you are talking
about a movement of yourself that focuses on your being in a different
location after than you were before. The prime example is gehen.

Ich bin in den Park gegangen.

I went to the park.
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Here are some others:

to fly :
fliegen geflogen
to swim : schwimmen geschwommen
to jump:
springen gesprungen
to fall:
fallen gefallen
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And here are some less obvious ones:

to get up:
aufstehen aufgestanden
to rise (sun):
aufgehen aufgegangen
to move (new flat): umziehen umgezogen
to travel :
reisen
gereist
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The reason why we cant just say verbs of movement is that for
instance tanzen (to dance) does not work with sein although your
whole body is moving.

Ich habe getanzt.

I danced.
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The focus of to dance is not your being in some location before and
some other after that. And if you dance from the bar to your house?
Well, then it is sein of course.

Ich bin von der Bar nach Hause getanzt.

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A similar kind of inverted example is fahren. The default fahren works

with sein.

Ich bin gestern mit meinem Bruder nach Mnchen gefahren.

I went to Munich with my brother yesterday (by car).
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However, if you just go to Munich to drop of your brother there and then
you head right back the focus shifts.

Ich habe gestern meinen Bruder nach Mnchen gefahren.

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I drove my brother to Munich yesterday.

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In grammar-nerd-speak we could also say, whenever you have an

accusative object it is DEFINITELY going to be haben. and definitely
as in mostly because you know the exceptions. But theyre few.
Anyway I hope you get the idea. Now, there are some verbs that are
not really physical movements but rather movements of the soul. They
also work with sein.

Ich bin eingeschlafen.

I fell asleep.
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Marie ist aufgewacht.

Marie woke up.
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Maries Hund ist gestorben.

Maries dog died.
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Ich bin gestern 30 geworden.

I turned 30 yesterday.
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And then there is THE BIG exception to the whole idea of movement.
to stay. Yes, bleiben also needs a form of sein.

Ich bin gestern abend zuhause geblieben.

I stayed home yesterday.
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This just doesnt make any sense but well have to accept it. Oh and the
verb sein itself also needs sein as a helper. Why does sein need a
helper verb you ask? Because, remember, EVERY verb has either form of
the past a spoken past and a written past.

Ich bin schon 3 mal in Paris gewesen.

Ive been to Paris 3 times already.
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This doesnt sound very nice though and I would use the written past
for sein. So for the verbs we just saw and some others that are
similar, use sein and for AAAAAAALLLL the rest, use haben! So thats
it. That is the German spoken past. You need to know the ge-form. If
you dont know it, you can ALWAYS use the default ge-verbt and be
understood and corrected. And you need to know whether to
use habenor sein. This seems like a lot but it is just a question of
getting used to it. You just need practice. Id say these things have to
come out without thought before it makes sense to delve deeper into
German and start worrying about, say, cases. Getting an article wrong is
a but a glitch in comparison to a wrong spoken past. And also, the
spoken past will constantly train you in the whole verb-at-the-endconcept. If I say

Gestern habe ich, als ich im Supermarkt war, meine Ex-Freundin

___
Yesterday, when I was in the supermarket I ___ my ex girlfriend.
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you have NOOO clue yet as to what I actually did. Did I see her? Did I call
her? Did I kiss her? You will never know. It is the ge-form that tells you
what actually happened and this means that you need to pay attention
to it when listening to people. Alright so you need to practice a lot and
to get you started here is an exercise where you have a lot of irregular
verb forms. As always, the solutions are given on the right, so all you
have to do is cover it with you hand and then read it off the page in past
tense. And read out loud! And when you are done with the page do it
again! And then, again. And again. And again until you dont need to
think anymore.

Download Exercise German Past 1 (filetype: pdf)

And thats it for today next time well look at the written past and find
out which verbs use it even in spoken German. If you have any questions
regarding the article or the exercise or if I made a bad mistake
somewhere, please leave me a comment. I hope you liked it and see you
next time.

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