Learn how to use German adjectives
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Hallo, ich bin Laura. Hi everybody! I’m Laura. |
| Welcome to GermanPod101.com’s “Deutsch in 3 Minuten”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn German. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to use the verb haben, "to have," in the negative form. |
| In this lesson, we will start to learn about German adjectives and how to use them properly. |
| You will see that for adjectives, things in German are not as simple as in English. |
| The basic rule in order to use adjectives correctly in German is that adjectives always have to agree with their subject. |
| Let’s start with a concrete example: |
| Er ist ein lustiger Mann. - "He’s a funny man" |
| [slowly] : Er ist ein lustiger Mann. Mann is a masculine word and here the adjective is lustiger -- “funny”. |
| Let’s see the same sentence with a feminine subject. It becomes: Sie ist eine lustige Frau - "She’s a funny woman." |
| Here you have to add an e to the indefinite article ein so it becomes eine and adjective loses its r and becomes lustige. |
| [slowly]:Sie ist eine lustige Frau. |
| Do you remember that there are 3 articles in German? |
| The neutral article also changes the adjective. |
| Das ist ein lustiges Spiel - "It is a funny game." |
| Here the subject Spiel is a neutral singular word, so the adjective lustiges is also in the neutral singular form. |
| The indefinite article stays the same as in the masculine version but we have to add an “s” to the adjective to make it neutral. |
| [slowly] Das ist ein lustiges Spiel. |
| In German the form of the adjective also depends on the structure of the sentence. |
| It is also correct to say. |
| Der Mann ist lustig. |
| Die Frau ist lustig. |
| Das Spiel ist lustig. |
| Here are a few more examples to show the difference between masculine, feminine and neutral form. |
| Freundlicher is the masculine for "nice", "kind", whereas |
| freundliche is the feminine and |
| freundliches the neutral form. |
| Schöner is the masculine for "nice", "beautiful", whereas |
| schöne is the feminine and |
| schönes the neutral one. |
| Warmer is the masculine for "hot", whereas warme is the feminine and |
| warmes the neutral. |
| Leckerer is the masculine for "delicious", whereas leckere is the feminine and |
| leckeres the neutral. |
| Now let’s find out how to turn and adjective from singular to plural. Basically the rule is to use the feminine form at the end of the adjective to make it plural. |
| For example, Julia ist eine freundliche Frau means "Julie is a kind woman", so if you turn it to plural it is the same. Das sind freundliche Freunde which is "These are kind friends ". |
| The same goes for the masculine singular form. |
| Julian is a kind man. Julian ist ein freundlicher Mann. Marc and Julian are kind men. Julian und Marc sind freundliche Männer. |
| In German the use of the adjective varies according to the structure of the sentence. |
| Here’s an easy version! |
| If You are describing an object you can always use the basic form and don’t have to worry about how to build the proper form. |
| The basic form is neither masculine or feminine nor neutral. |
| To practice this switch, let’s see some examples: |
| If you want to say "This is a big garden" you say Das ist ein großer Garten as Garten is masculine. |
| Whereas if You say "My garden is big" you will say Mein Garten ist groß. So here you don’t use the masculine but the basic form. |
| The same goes for the female version: |
| "This is a small flat" is Das ist eine kleine Wohnung as it is die Wohnung, a female noun. |
| So if You ask how the flat is (big, small, comfortable, dark and so on) You’ll say: |
| Meine Wohnung ist klein, "My flat is small" and use the basic form. |
| If you want to say "This is a big room" you use the neutral form of the adjective and say Das ist ein großes Zimmer as das Zimmer is neutral. |
| Or You use the basic form and say Mein Zimmer ist groß. "My room is big" |
| If you want to say "My brothers are tall" while using the plural, here the adjective stays the same and you will say Meine Brüder sind groß. |
| Now it’s time for Laura’s Insights. |
| If you want to insist on an adjective in German, you can use the word sehr and wirklich before the adjective as sehr schön, which is "very beautiful" or wirklich lecker to say "really delicious." |
| In this lesson, we learned how to properly use adjectives in German and how to agree them correctly with nouns. |
| Next time we’ll learn the basic uses of verb gehen, which is "to go", so that you will be able to say sentences like "I’m going to school." |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Deutsch in 3 Minuten lesson. |
| Bis bald! |
Comments
Hide