Starke Deklination der Adjektive

When there is no article in front of an adjective used attributively, then the strong declension is used. Although there are more endings to learn it is worth noting that, with the exception of the genitive masculine and neuter, the endings match those of the definite article.

	M	F	N	P
N	-er	-e	-es	-e
A	-en	-e	es	-e
G	-en	-er	-en	-er
D	-em	-er	-em	-en

 

The strong endings are also used after pronouns that have no ending (nach Pronomen ohne Endung): allerlei, etwas, genug, manch, mancherlei, mehr, nichts, viel, welch, wenig, solch and also after the pronouns:  andere, derartige, einige, einzelne, etliche, folgende, gewisse, lauter, mehrere, ein paar, verschiedene, viele, wenige. They are used following ich, du and whole numbers greater than one.

 

It's worth noting the peculiarities of a few adjectives. Adjectives ending in -a are not declined - rosa, lila, prima, usw. Those ending -el drop the e when declined, for example: dunkel, nobel, heikel would add the appropriate ending to dunkl, nobl, heikl. A similar thing happens with some ending -er - after a diphthong as in sauer and where the adjective comes from a foreign language. But there are some ending in -er that don't follow this pattern - finster, bitter are good examples. Hoch drops the c when used attributively.