Basics 1
PRACTICE
Tips and notes
Welcome to German :)
Welcome to the German course!
We will provide you with tips and
notes throughout the course.
However, be aware that these are
optional. Only read them when
you feel stuck, or when you are
Capitalizing nouns
In German, all nouns are
capitalized. For example, "my
name" is mein Name, and "the
German genders are strange
Nouns in German are either
feminine, masculine or neuter.
For example, Frau (woman) is
feminine, Mann (man) is
masculine, and Kind (child) is
neuter.
While some nouns (Frau, Mann, …)
have natural gender like in
English (a woman is female, a man
interested in the details. You can
use the course without them.
Often, it's best to just dive into
the practice. See how it goes! You
can always revisit the Notes
section later on.
apple" is der Apfel. This helps you
identify which words are the
nouns in a sentence.
is male), most nouns have
grammatical gender (depends on
word ending, or seemingly
random).
For example, Mädchen (girl) is
neuter, because all words ending
in -chen are neuter. Wasser
(water) is neuter, but Cola is
feminine, and Saft (juice) is and eine is used for feminine
masculine. nouns. Stay with us to find out
how "cases" will later modify
It is important to learn every noun these.
along with its gender because
parts of German sentences gender indefinite article
change depending on the gender
of their nouns. masculine ein Mann

For now, just remember that the neuter ein Mädchen

indefinite article (a/an) ein is used feminine eine Frau
for masculine and neuter nouns,

Verb conjugations
Conjugating regular verbs English German
ending
person example
Verb conjugation in German is
more complex than in English. To I -e ich
conjugate a regular verb in the trinke
present tense, identify the stem of you -st du
the verb and add the ending (singular trinkst
corresponding to any of the informal)
grammatical persons, which you
can simply memorize. For now, he/she/it -t er/sie/es
trinkt
here are the singular forms:

Example: trinken (to drink) Conjugations of the verb

sein (to be)
Like in English, sein (to be) is
completely irregular, and its
conjugations simply need to be
memorized. Again, you will learn
the plural forms soon.
 English German

I am ich bin

you (singular du bist

informal) are

he/she/it is er/sie/es
ist

Umlauts
Umlauts are letters (more
specifically vowels) that have two
dots above them and appear in
some German words like
Mädchen.
Literally, "Umlaut" means "around
the sound," because its function is
to change how the vowel sounds.
no umlaut umlaut
a ä
o ö
u ü
An umlaut change may change
the meaning. That's why it's
important not to ignore those
little dots.

No continuous aspect
In German, there's no continuous
aspect. There are no separate
forms for "I drink" and "I am
drinking". There's only one form:
Ich trinke.
There's no such thing as Ich bin
trinke or Ich bin trinken!
When translating into English,
how can I tell whether to use the
simple (I drink) or the continuous
form (I am drinking)?
Unless the context suggests
otherwise, either form should be
accepted.