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Adjectives are very useful in making sentences more interesting or for providing clarity. They modify nouns and pronouns and can be predicative or attributive:Predicative: He is lucky.Attributive: John is a lucky guy.Adjectives work the same way in German, with the exception of requiring an ending when used attributively: ◆   Predicative: […]

Modifiers include those words that help to describe a noun or pronoun. Some modifiers are called adjectives. If an adjective follows a verb like sein (to be) or werden (to become), it is a predicate adjective. For example: Der Mann ist alt. The man is old. Sie wurde krank. She […]

Relative pronouns are commonly used to combine two sentences that have the same noun or pronoun in both. One of them is changed to a relative pronoun, and the sentences are then combined: identical noun + identical noun Do you know the man? + The man is a thief. Do […]

There are many subordinating conjunctions, and they all share two characteristics: (1) they introduce dependent clauses that do not make complete sense when they stand alone; and (2) the conjugated verb in such clauses is normally the last element in the clause: main clause + subordinating conjunction + dependent clause […]

The main clause of a German sentence contains a subject and a verb and makes complete sense when it stands alone. Except when some element other than the subject begins a main clause, the subject precedes the verb: Er kommt spät nach Hause.                 He comes home late. Tina versteht es […]

Imperatives are commands given, for the most part, to the second person pronoun you. In English, the infinitive of a verb without the particle word to is used to give a casual command and the same form with the addition of the word please is used to give a more […]

Let’s look at an English sentence and the kinds of questions that can be formed from the words: Every day the children’s voices grew louder and louder, because Grandpa always played his radio so loudly. The following questions can be asked of the various elements in this sentence: How often […]

In both English and German, there is a variety of ways to form questions. In German questions that concern the action of a verb and in some English questions, the verb precedes the subject: verb + subject Ist + Martin zu Hause? Is Martin at home? But if the question […]

Declarative sentences in both English and German consist of a subject and a pred-icate. In German, the subject is in the nominative case, and the verb in the predi-cate is conjugated appropriately for the subject and in a specific tense: subject + verb + predicate Karl + singt + gut. […]

In infinitive clauses, the infinitive goes to the end of the clause and is preceded by zu. This resembles English infinitives such as to speak, to help, and so on, and occurs with verbs without a prefix or with an inseparable prefix. zu sprechen         zu helfenzu besprechen  […]