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Basics 1
Tips and notes
Welcome to German :)
Welcome to the German course! We will
provide you with tips and notes
throughout the course. However, be
aware that these are optional. Only read
them when you feel stuck, or when you
are interested in the details. You can use
the course without them.
Capitalizing nouns
In German, all nouns are capitalized.
For example, "my name" is mein Name,
and "the apple" is der Apfel. This helps
German genders are strange
Nouns in German are either feminine,
masculine or neuter. For example, Frau
(woman) is feminine, Mann (man) is
masculine, and Kind (child) is neuter.
While some nouns (Frau, Mann, …) have
natural gender like in English (a woman
is female, a man is male), most nouns
have grammatical gender (depends on
word ending, or seemingly random).
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PRACTICE
Often, it's best to just dive into the
practice. See how it goes! You can
always revisit the Notes section later on.
you identify which words are the nouns
in a sentence.
For example, Mädchen (girl) is neuter,
because all words ending in -chen are
neuter. Wasser (water) is neuter, but
Cola is feminine, and Saft (juice) is
masculine.
It is important to learn every noun along
with its gender because parts of
German sentences change depending on
the gender of their nouns.
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For now, just remember that the

gender indefinite article
indefinite article (a/an) ein is used for
masculine and neuter nouns, and eine is masculine ein Mann
used for feminine nouns. Stay with us to
find out how "cases" will later modify neuter ein Mädchen
these.
feminine eine Frau

Verb conjugations
Conjugating regular verbs Conjugations of the verb sein (to
be)
Verb conjugation in German is more
complex than in English. To conjugate a Like in English, sein (to be) is completely
regular verb in the present tense, irregular, and its conjugations simply
identify the stem of the verb and add the need to be memorized. Again, you will
ending corresponding to any of the learn the plural forms soon.
grammatical persons, which you can
simply memorize. For now, here are the English German
singular forms:
I am ich bin
Example: trinken (to drink)
you (singular du bist
English German informal) are
ending
person example
he/she/it is er/sie/es
I -e ich ist
trinke

you -st du
(singular trinkst
informal)

he/she/it -t er/sie/es
trinkt

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Umlauts
Umlauts are letters (more specifically
vowels) that have two dots above them
and appear in some German words like
Mädchen.
Literally, "Umlaut" means "around the
sound," because its function is to change
how the vowel sounds.
No continuous aspect
In German, there's no continuous
aspect. There are no separate forms for
"I drink" and "I am drinking". There's only
one form: Ich trinke.
There's no such thing as Ich bin trinke or
Ich bin trinken!
https://www.duolingo.com/skill/de/Basics-1/tips-and-notes
Duolingo | Learn German for free
no umlaut umlaut
a ä
o ö
u ü
An umlaut change may change the
meaning. That's why it's important not to
ignore those little dots.
If you can't type these, a workaround is
to type "oe" instead of "ö", for example.
When translating into English, how can I
tell whether to use the simple (I drink)
or the continuous form (I am drinking)?
Unless the context suggests otherwise,
either form should be accepted.
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