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| German grammar |
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Thegrammar of theGerman language is quite similar to that of the otherGermanic languages.Although some features ofGerman grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of English in that it has, among other things,cases andgender in nouns and a strictverb-second word order in main clauses.
German has retained many of the grammatical distinctions that otherGermanic languages have lost in whole or in part. There are three genders and four cases, and verbs are conjugated forperson andnumber. Accordingly, German has moreinflections than English, and uses moresuffixes. For example, in comparison to the -s added to third-person singular present-tense verbs in English, most German verbs employ four different suffixes for the conjugation of present-tense verbs, namely -e for the first-person singular, -st for the informal second-person singular, -t for the third-person singular and for the informal second-person plural, and -en for the first- and third-person plural, as well as for the formal second-person singular/plural.
Owing to the gender and case distinctions, thearticles have more possible forms. In addition, some prepositions combine with some of the articles (e.g. In dem ---> Im).
Numerals are similar to other Germanic languages. Unlike modern English,Swedish,Norwegian,Icelandic andFaroese, units are placed before tens as inAfrikaans,Early Modern English,Danish,Dutch,Yiddish andFrisian, e.g. twenty-one: one-and-twenty.
Students of German are often advised to learn German nouns with their accompanyingdefinite article, as the definite article of a German noun corresponds to the gender of the noun. However, the meaning or form, especially the ending, of a noun can be used to recognize 80% of noun genders.[1] For instance, nouns ending in the suffixes-heit,-keit,-ung,-schaft or-tät are always feminine.[2]
German sentence structure is similar to other Germanic languages in its use ofV2 word order.
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