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.

Gemischte Deklination der Adjektive

The mixed declension - gemischte Deklination - is used for adjectives that follow an indefinite article - nach dem unbestimmten Artikel. When we looked at the weak declension we saw that -en was used in all but 5 positions in the table of endings. That applies for the mixed declension as well but 3 of the 5 differ in the mixed declension. These are shown with a pink background in the table below.

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

 

 

You may wonder why a plural is shown. That's because the mixed declension is used after kein and the possesive pronouns mein, dein, sein and so on. It is also used after manch ein, solch ein, welch ein, ein solcher.

 

The 3 positions in the table that differ from the weak endings all follow determiners which have no ending e.g. ein, mein, kein. Where the adjective has -en as ending then the determiner has its own ending e.g. the masculine accusative, genitive and dative - meinen alten Freund, meines alten Freundes, meinem alten Freund.

 

Again it is really worth working through some exercises to practise these. You find some useful exercise here

Schwache Deklination der Adjektive

I recently found I was making mistakes with something I thought I had mastered years ago - adjective endings. A sure sign that I need to keep on practising the basics of the language. Also after two months silence on this blog it's time to get to work again.

German adjectives inflect when placed before the noun they qualify. Used attributively like this, they take endings which need to be in agreement with the gender, case and number of the noun. However, there is a further complication - the endings can also depend on what determiner precedes them, if any. Determiners include the definite and indefinite articles but also pronouns such as dieser, jeder, andere.

It is usual to set out the adjectival endings in three different tables - the so called weak, strong and mixed declensions. Since we are learning German I'll introduce the German terms - schwache Deklination, starke Deklination, gemischte Deklination.

I find it easier to learn if I can break tasks down into manageable chunks and, since the weak declension is the easiest to learn, we'll start there. This really is easy. There are only two possible endings -e or -en. The weak declension is used for adjectives after the definite article - nach dem bestimmten Artikel.

	M	F	N	P
N	-e	-e	-e	-en
A	-en	-e	-e	-en
G	-en	-en	-en	-en
D	-en	-en	-en	-en

Notice there are only 5 instances in the table where the ending is -e. Learn those and remember everything else is -en.

Now for something to practise with. I suggest building some simple exercises yourself where you can insert adjectives between article and noun. The following suggests a pattern for covering all the cases and the plural. Supply your own adjectives and nouns.
    Nom. - der Herr, die Dame, das Kind
    Akk. - ohne den Herrn, ohne die Frau, ohne das Mädchen
    Gen. - trotz des Mannes, trotz der Frau, wegen des Kindes
    Dat. - mit dem Politiker, nach der Frau, von dem Mädchen
    Plur. - die Kinder, ohne die K., trotz der K., mit den Kindern

The weak declension is also used after:
    derjenige, derselbe, dieser, jeder, jeglicher, jener, mancher, solcher, welcher
    alle, beide, irgendwelche, sämtliche
and in the singular after:
    all-, einig-,irgendwelch-, sämtlich-
after the personal pronouns wir, ihr

BEOLINGUS Dictionary

The BEOLINGUS dictionary is a useful German-English dictionary from TU Chemnitz. You can see examples of words in use and you can hear the pronunciation for many words. It's also possible to incorporate it into websites and there are add-ins for most browsers. Though I have yet to try it out, there is a facility for practising vocabulary.

New words

I've starting learning how to use the Natural Language Toolkit (see http://www.nltk.org/) and then started looking for corpora and other resources in German. One of the sites I found Die Wortwarte which shows the very latest in new German words. There were 20 listed today. Click on any of the words and you can see them used in context. For more resources for German than visit the ACL wiki

Satiren aus Israel

I came across a quote from Ephraim Kishon on zitate.net which amused me.

Wenn man beginnt, seinem Passfoto ähnlich zu sehen, sollte man in den Urlaub fahren.

My passport has only about a year to run so my picture is a very much younger me. Strangely, I seem to have worn the same sweater for the photo as I did for the previous passport in 1992 ... and I still have the sweater in my wardrobe.

The reason the quote stood out for me is because I have recently bought two of his books: Drehn Sie sich um Frau Lot and Nicht so laut vor Jericho. I found the first of these in the Amnesty bookshop in Malvern (a good source for secondhand German books). I read a few stories immediately and  found them highly amusing - so much so that, when I saw the second book the very next day in the Oxfam bookshop in Hereford, I had to buy it.

I think some of the stories would be better described as farce than satire and it does seem that die Satire can encompass meanings around lampoon and mockery. The advantage of books like these is the stories are brief, generally four or five pages, and not too demanding. If you can only spare a few minutes a day to read something auf Deutsch then short stories such as these are well suited and books like these can be found for about £2 each.

I must share a quote about the exodus from Egypt that starts the story MIT MAZZES VERSEHEN

Zweimal im Verlauf unserer Geschichte sind wir aus Ägypten ausgezogen: das erstemal einige Jahrtausende vor der britischen Verwaltungsperiode und unter der Führung Gottes, das zweitemal einige Jahre nach der britischen Verwaltungsperiode und unter dem Druck der UNO.

 
I have to confess I'm old enough to remember the second exodus.

Occupational haphazard

Every job has its own peculiar vocabulary or uses more common words in a different way. And, of course, many jobs involve tools that you may not be able to name in your own language. I regularly follow the BR Alpha careers series Ich mach's

Mehr als 350 Berufe im Dualen System, dazu kommen Lehrstellen bei Behörden und der Bahn, außerdem locken Fachschulen mit ihren Abschlüssen: Doch welche Ausbildung in Betrieb und Berufsschule ist für wen richtig? "Ich mach's!" bringt es auf den Punkt.

The latest podcast was Siebdrucker/in and one of the words I heard used was die Rakel. I imagined this would be spelled Rackel and when I couldn't find that in my Oxford-Duden I tried Rachel. I don't often get caught out on spelling but I was this time. I found the correct spelling by looking up Siebdruck in Wikipedia. Apparently Rakel comes from the French racle. In screen-printing - Siebdruck - it's has a rubber edge and is used to press the ink through the screen - in other words, it's a squeegee. In other forms of printing die Rakel is metal and I think it's sometimes called a doctor blade and makes sure there's not too much ink on the roller.

The previous podcast from Ich mach's was Binnenschiffer/in and there were a few words that stood out for me. To unload a ship is löschen. Upstream is zu Berg and downstream is zu Tal. An example of usage is Am 23.03.2010 waren wir mit unserer Harmonie auf der Elbe zu Tal. Es war ziemlich windig - The example is from YouTube.



I couldn't listen to the sound of diesel motors all day so it's not the job for me but inland shipping is important in Germany and involves the best part of 5000 vessels.

Python

Remember Monty Python's Flying Circus? There's a computer programming language that get's its name from this famous BBC TV series. Python is not named for a snake but the programme. I've let learning something of this language distract me from learning German this last week so I decided to see what there is in German about the language. The Python wiki lists German language resources and I also found a useful blog http://www.pythonmania.de/. Having looked at this again just now I find Monty Python gets a mention as well:

Python ist eine moderne, objektorientierte Programmiersprache. Sie wurde von Guido van Rossum entwickelt und nach der berühmten Comedy-Truppe "Monty Pythons Flying Circus" benannt (und nicht nach der - ebenfalls berühmten - Schlange)

Fuchsschwanz

I seem to be keeping busy around the house - making cupboards, putting up curtain track, a shower screen and so on. It's been good to make use of tools that hardly saw the light of day in the last couple of years before moving. Eventually I shall create a workshop in the garage. Looking at the names for tools in the Duden Bildwörterbuch I came across der gerade Fuchsschwanz. The illustration shows what looks like a dovetail saw and I have to admit the shape of the handle does look like a fox's brush. Previously I had thought der Fuchschwanz referred only to a handsaw with a flexible, unsupported blade - rip saw, cross cut saw, panel saw - and of course their handles look nothing like the tail of a fox. When I looked up Fuchsschwanz on the net I found only handsaws and a Wikipedia article says "Der Fuchschwanz ... besitzt keinen verdickten Rücken wie etwa die Feinsäge".

Just to confuse matters, there are two different plants called Fuchsschwanz and a dovetail joint is die Schwalbenschwanzverbindung - and, yes, the swallowtail butterfly is der Schwalbenschwanz. And just to prove German speaking people get confused take a look at Was fürn Werkzeug ist eigentlich ein Schwalbensschwanz

Exploring themes

One way of exploring a particular topic is to take advantage of Spiegel Wissen which draws from several sources including the magazine archive stretching back over fifty years. For example, if you want to learn about glaciers and pick up the latest reports then go for the theme Gletscher As you will see this gives good lexical information as well as news reports such as Grönland-Gletscher: Riesiger Eisberg in der Arktis abgebrochen

The range of topics is vast from the slightly demanding such as Quantenphysik to the somewhat lighter Quiz. And there's a full A-Z and just to give you an A and a Z example try Alles außer Fußball and Sebastian Sick's Zwiebelfisch blog.

Dialect

In many parts of Germany and Austria it's not enough to speak standard German - Hochdeutsch - you may also need some understanding of the local dialect. It's more than just variations in accent, some words are different. Listening to regional radio broadcasts or watching TV can help tune the ear but speaking probably needs the experience of living in a place for some time. I came across an interesting Austrian article on the subject of the need for migrants to learn dialect as well as standard German - Der Dialekt als Hindernis beim Deutschlernen in DiePresse.com

Wer in Kursen Deutsch gelernt hat, scheitert dennoch oft im täglichen Umgang mit Menschen, die Dialekt sprechen. Experten empfehlen daher die Einbeziehung regionaler Dialekte in die Ausbildung von Migranten.

TV licensing in Germany

I was surprised to learn that in Germany you have to pay for a fee for every TV and radio receiver. The licence fee is paid monthly and not annually as in Britain. There has also been some uncertainty about whether to include PCs and smartphones capable of receiving broadcasts. It's all going to change in 2013 - Die Rundfunkgebühr in Deutschland soll auf eine neue Basis gestellt werden - according to a report I read today Ein Haushalt, eine Rundfunkgebühr You can also see a video report on the same subject.

You may come across the initials GEZ in relation to the licence fee. This is explained fully on http://www.gez.de/

Die Gebühreneinzugszentrale der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten ist eine Gemeinschaftseinrichtung der ARD-Landesrundfunkanstalten, des Zweiten Deutschen Fernsehen (ZDF) und des Deutschlandradio. Ihre Aufgabe besteht darin, die Rundfunkgebühren einzuziehen.

Focus

Looking for reading material to help you learn German? Try Focus magazine which makes all its past issues freely available online - Focus Archiv

New TV Portal

It looks like ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL are cooperating on an new online portal which will allow users to watch a big selection of TV programmes and films without cost. For a German language report on these plans go to Private TV-Sender verbünden sich im Netz which is a report by stern.de

Diving for Pearls

OK, if you are interested in diving for pearls you've probably come to the wrong place. I want to draw attention to an interesting German language site with plenty of treasures for the culturally minded. Perlentaucher.de describes itself as Online Kulturmagazin mit Presseschauen, Rezension, Autorenliste, Feuillton.

Their Links page includes access to a very comprehensive links listing of just about every publisher on the web. I have found some offering free e-books to download. They also list by country the most important Zeitungen, Zeitschrifte und Internetmagazine, Buchkritiken und Literaturmagazine.

The Potsdam Declaration

A few years ago I visited Cecilienhof in Potsdam and was able to see the rooms layed out as they were for the meetings for the Tripartite Conference which led to the Potsdam Declaration. The Conference ended 65 years ago today. There were nine meetings between 17 and 25 July and then a break while the results of the British general election were declared. On July 28 Clement Attlee returned to the Conference as Prime Minister, accompanied by the new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Ernest Bevin. The Conference and the earlier one at Yalta shaped the course of post war history in Europe, particularly the eastern part, for four decades.

For material in German on das Potsdamer Abkommen or die Potsdamer Konferenz see http://www.kalenderblatt.de/index.php?what=thmanu&lang=de&manu_id=221&sdt=20100802 or the website of  the "Deutschen Historischen Museums"

The quick brown fox

If you have ever tried to learn to touch type you have probably come across the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" which uses all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet. Listening to a German podcast this morning I discovered there is a German word for this. Es ist ein Pangramm. Ein Satz, der alle Buchstaben des Alphabets enthält. I expect it's pangramme in English - confusing as the German plural is Pangramme. Both pan and gramm come from Greek words.

Although the podcast gave some German examples I wasn't bright enough to note them down. It was before my second coffee of the day! So Wikipedia to the rescue - I looked up Pangramm and there they were, including Pangramme mit äöü und ß

Traffic Jams

Traffic queues were not unusual when I commuted between Newport, South Wales and Worcester back in the 1990s. And the company supplying the traffic cones for the road works had the strap line on their vans "Jam makers since 19.."

Although many parts of Austria I have visited have little traffic compared to the UK, I did experience delays ion the motorway after leaving the airport at Salzburg and there are some bottle-necks which create problems in the peak holiday periods when half of Germany seems to want to travel through Austria to get to Italy or the Adriatic. I was reminded of that today when I saw a report saying:

Die Schlange vor dem Tauerntunnel maß am späten Vormittag beinahe 35 Kilometer.

A five hour queue on a motorway is no fun! I was caught like that on the M5 a few years ago and was awfully glad to have plenty of water in the car. For the report in kurier.at click on Stau-Gau auf der Tauernautobahn  The Kurier website also reports on more problems for holiday makers -  Urlauber stecken in Griecheland fest reports on the problems of getting fuel because of a strike by lorry drivers.

Internet Radio

Yesterday was the big day when I finally finished work. Ich bin jetzt in Ruhestand. Thanks to very generous colleagues I now have a PURE Evoke Flow, a radio that not only tunes into DAB digital radio but enables me to listen to internet radio without having to switch on my PC. I can now choose from over 1900 German language radio stations and listen to podcasts anywhere in the house. The internet radio connects to http://www.thelounge.com/ to give access to thousands of radio stations. Even if you don't have an internet radio you can still use thelounge which has good filters on its database to let you pick out what interests you.

When it came to downloading the manual, I also chose to download the Bedienungsanleitung so I can learn some more German. Here's some of what it says Über die PURE Lounge

Um Ihren EVOKE Flow mit all seinen Funktionen und Besonderheiten nutzen zu können, verbinden Sie ihn mit der PURE Lounge (www.thelounge.com), Ihrem Online-Gateway zu einer immensen Auswahl an Audioinhalten aus dem Internet. Die PURE Lounge bietet Tausende von Radiosendern, Podcasts und Listen-Again-Programmen, die Sie bequem von Wohnzimmer, Badezimmer, Garten, Garage − oder wo auch immer Sie sich in Reichweite Ihres Netzwerks befinden - aus hören können.

Loveparade Tragedy

The tragic loss of life and the many injuries from the crush in the tunnel leading to and from the venue in Duisburg leaves many questions open, particularly about whether it was avoidable given better crowd management or better policing. This is all too reminiscent of the Hillsborough tragedy in Britain.

N24 has the headline 19 Tote und viele offene Fragen and sets out some of the questions that need to be answered. Stern reports Alle 19 Toten sind identifiziert and has links to other reports. Tagesschau.de has Staatsanwaltschaft ermittelt nach der Tragödie with links to video material.

Until recently, I co-ordinated two teams of clergy who were available to respond to major incidents like this and through that I gained insights into how the blue light and other agencies operate in England when something like this happens. I would be interested to find out what arrangements exist in Germany for a planned response to major incidents. Very often incidents affect families and friends from across the world. Not all those who died at Duisberg came from Germany and even some of those who had homes in Germany originated elsewhere. Please pray for the bereaved and the injured and their families.