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Like other tenses in English, the future tense has more than one form:. habitual I will go to school. incomplete or progressive I will be going to school.   Both forms are translated into German by a single future-tense conjugation, which consists of the present-tense conjugation of werden and an infinitive […]

The English present perfect and past perfect tenses have both a habitual form and a progressive form in their conjugation. habitual   They have worked here.                   They had worked here. incomplete or progressive    They have been working here.       […]

Just like the English present tense, the past tense has three forms: habitual                                   I spoke German.incomplete or progressive      I was speaking German.emphatic                      […]

The English present tense is more complex than the German present tense. English has three forms to consider: habitual                                     I speak German.incomplete or progressive     I am speaking German.emphatic                                  I […]

   Just as English questions do, German questions fall into two major categories. There are questions that can by answered by ja or nein (yes or no); other questions begin with an interrogative word such as wer (who) and can have a variety of answers. Yes and no questions   German questions […]

    Just as English uses contractions to combine two words together, German does the same thing but with different parts of speech. German combines prepositions with definite articles. Contractions occur when masculine and neuter definite articles in the dative case combine with five prepositions. Notice also that there is only one feminine […]

   A predicate adjective follows a verb such as sein (to be) or werden (to become) and modifies the subject of the sentence. No ending is required on predicate adjectives. Meine Tante ist ziemlich alt. My aunt is rather old. Ein Freund von mir wurde reich. A friend of mine […]

Nouns are generally preceded by determiners. Some determiners are the definite and indefinite articles such as der Mantel and eine Brücke. Another category is the interrogative words such as welche Schule or wie viele Leute. The largest categories are the der words and the ein words. Der words The der […]

  A special category of prepositions takes either the accusative or the dative case. Take a look at these prepositions. an at auf on, onto hinter behind in in, into neben next to über over unter under vor in front of, before zwischen between   Use the dative case when […]

The genitive case has two primary functions: (1) to link nouns to show possession and (2) to identify the object of genitive prepositions. Let’s look at the genitive case of some example nouns with the definite article (der, die, das), the indefinite article (ein, eine), and kein. masculine feminine neuter […]