#allthingsgerman

How to determine cases in german

verbs have the quality to bound nouns, as in certain nouns are necessary when using a certain verb. there are only rare exceptions ("it snows/ rains" - there is no noun needed).

e.g. with "to sleep" it needs to be determined who or what sleeps. "The baby sleeps." this is the nominative and in german you ask for it with "Wer oder was schläft?" - Das Baby."

to love - now you need two nouns. one noun to describe who loves and one noun to describe who is loved. "Der Bär liebt den Tiger." this is the accussative. in german you ask with "Der Bär liebt wen oder was? - Den Tiger." as you might notice immediately, in german the inflexion - the adaption to the different cases - mostly happens in the pronouns, not in the noun itself. so "der Tiger" turns to "den Tiger" in accussative, just as it is "ich liebe dich" and not "ich liebe du".

to give - now you have a person who gives, someone who is given and something that is given. "Der Mann gibt dem Mädchen den Ball." this is dative. in german you ask with "Der Mann gibt wem oder was den Ball? - Dem Mädchen."

the last case - the genitive - becomes more and more rare in every day german use and is mostly replaced with dative. it mostly describes who or what something belongs to. e.g. "Ich bringe den Hund meines Freundes zum Tierarzt." (i take my friend's dog to the vet.). in german you ask "Ich bringe wessen Hund zum Tierarzt? - Des Freundes." the genitive is the only case where in most cases (with male nouns) an "s" is added to the noun.

In conclusion: the pronouns/ articles change depending on the case.

little tip: as you can notice with (mostly) male nouns there is a pattern: den - n - with accussative, dem - m - with dative and des - s - with genitive.

okay i would say there are at least two ways to use "doch".

1) standing alone

e.g. someone says no and you reply with "doch" (instead of yes) in that case the word means "you little shit head, you are wrong and I am right and this will happen my way and now shut the hell up"

2) in a sentence

in that case "doch" strengthens the meaning of everything you say, but it also does much more than that, it really is hard to describe. i would say it somehow shows that something is obvious, it is very suggestive in its use. a few examples in an attempt to bring the use and meaning closer to you:

"Das ist doch klar" - "that is obviously clear" (read it as "are you stupid not to understand that?")

"Du willst das doch auch." - "you obviously want this too"

"Lass uns doch ins Kino gehen" - "let's go to the cinema" (here we have this suggestive use, so it rather means "why don't we go to the cinema?")

"Du willst doch noch zum Essen bleiben, oder?" - "you want to stay for dinner, right?" (again, it's very suggestive, it strengthens what you want to say, honestly it kind of will make you feel guilty if you deny the offer for dinner)

okay so i had this seminar at uni about children's acquisition of speech and what's so fascinating about that is that baby brains are incredibly good at detecting patterns and learning them. so there are quite a few regularities/ patterns when it comes to the use of articles, otherwise it wouldn't be so easy for german children to learn.

there are different forms of regularities (semantical, morphological, phonological).

1) semantical

descriptions for minerals, the weather or beverages: mostly masculine (e.g. der Stein, der Sturm, der Kaffee)

descriptions for trees or flowers: mostly feminine (e.g. die Birke, die Sonnenblume)

descriptions for metals: mostly neuter (e.g. das Eisen

2) morphological

nouns ending in -keit, -heit, -ung, -in: feminine

nouns ending in -chen, -lein, -fon: neuter

3) phonological

(polysyllabic) nouns ending in -e: mostly feminine (e.g. die Kerze, die Biene)

monosyllabic nouns with consonants at the beginning or ending of the word: mostly masculine (e.g. der Topf, der Stamm, der Strumpf)

polysyllabic nouns ending in -el, -er, -en, -or, -ig, -ling: mostly masculine (e.g. der Spiegel, der Spieler, der Garten, der Motor, der König, der Liebling)

this is a lot, and there are also a bunch of exceptions of course.

e.g. the probability that a monosyllabic noun ending with -e is feminine is 94 %. the probability that a monosyllabic noun is masculine is 61 % and that a polysyllabic noun ending in -el, -en or -er is masculine is 76 %. so this should give you at least a little bit of guidance.

i searched the internet and found two articles that i liked about the use of articles that might further help you (here and here).

What's the difference between saying something is "schön" and "wunderschön"? It seems schön is one of those words that has a bunch of different meanings, yea? Anything from nice to pretty to beautiful?

Lastly I know "sicher" means sure, but I've also heard the word "klar" used to mean the same thing, or even as another way of saying yes. Is "klar" like a more casual way of expressing agreement?

1) different forms of "no"

although in English the same word is used for different grammatical forms, in german we have two words for it: "Nein" and "kein"

"Nein" is a particle. e.g. "Nein, ich will das nicht essen." - "No, i don't want to eat this."

"kein" is a pronoun used to express the absence of something. e.g. "Ich habe keine Ahnung." - "i have no clue." or "Ich habe keinen Hunger." - "i am not hungry." (literally "i have no hunger."

"nee", "nö" etc. are just different informal ways to say "Nein". "ne" or rather 'ne is a shortening of the word "eine" in most cases or someone spelling "nee" wrong 🙈

2) schön/ wunderschön

you're right, "schön" is used quite often. either to mean something like "nice" as in "schönes Wetter" (nice weather), "schön zu hören" (nice to hear), or it's used to refer to an appearance, like something pretty or beautiful as in "schöne Haare" (pretty hair), "schöne Landschaft" (beautiful landscape) etc. i guess in most cases (at least I can't think of any exceptions) "wunderschön" is only used to describe appearances too, but it's even more pretty than pretty, it is wonderfully pretty, you know?

3) sicher/ klar

i guess in german we don't really have a word with the exact same meaning as "sure". like, "sicher" means more than that, it also means "safe". so you could say "ich bin mir sicher" - i am sure", "Ich fühle mich sicher" - i feel safe or "ja, sicher" - yes, for sure.

"klar" means "clear" or "obvious" e.g. "das ist eine klarer Fall, der leicht zu lösen ist." - this is an obvious case that's simple to solve". but it is used quite often in conversations and in an informal way, like you suggested, to show agreement or understanding. "Alles klar." / "Geht klar." e.g. as in "yes, I understood the task you gave me" or "Ja, klar." e.g. as in "obviously i want to spend time with you today".

uhmm... this is huge? 185 german actors are having their coming out together in a popular german news outlet tomorrow to demand more accurate representation and visibility in german television and film.