What is a German Umlaut? The German umlaut is recognisable by 2 little dots above a letter. The German umlaut is found on 3 letters, Ä, Ö and Ü. What does the German Umlaut do? When you see a German umlaut above one of the 3 letters, you will know that this is pronounced differently. […]

German Future Tense The German future tense is very similar to the future tense in English. To talk about something in the future, you can use the present tense as you do in English. For example: We’re flying to France next year. ⇨ Wir fliegen nächstes Jahr nach Frankreich. Ich spiele morgen Gittare. ⇨ I’m […]

German Imperfect Tense Here we want to go through how you talk about the past in German. There are a few forms of the past tense in German. We were talking about the perfect tense in our last blog and in this article we will be looking at the imperfect tense. Learn and enjoy the […]

What is a Verb Prefix in German? A verb prefix in German is an additional word such as an (on, to, by), zu (to), weg (away), which is added to the beginning of a verb to change its meaning. We have a similar occurrence in English but the extra word goes after the verb, e.g. […]

German Reflexive Verbs A German reflexive verb describes an action of someone (subject) where the action reflects back to the subject. German reflexive verbs are used in connection with a reflexive pronoun. “But what is a reflexive pronoun?” I hear you ask. A reflexive pronoun is an object pronoun. For example: myself, yourself, himself…   […]

Sie, du and ihr In English, there is only one word to say you while in German there are three different words. But don’t worry – the rule for when to use each of these three words is quite straight forward and easy to understand. The three words we are talking about are du, ihr […]

The word “zu“ is used in different ways in the German language. 1) The word “zu” is used as a verb prefix. With the English language, a verb prefix is a word like “up” or “down”. These are used with verbs to create new verbs which mean something completely different. get – get up – […]

We discussed in Part 1 how weak Verbs in German are structured and often follow fairly straight forward rules. But what about strong German Verbs? The most common ending for strong verbs is the same as the weak verbs -en Let’s look at a few verbs to illustrate this: schlafen (to sleep) – schlaf (stem) […]

The -ing Trap The German present tense is a pretty self explanatory title. It‘s used when you want to talk about something that is true at the moment, something that happens on a regular basis and what is happening at the moment. For example: I’m at home. He travels to work by car. I’m playing […]

German Pronouns German personal pronouns are a little more complicated than in English (no surprise there!). It can be tricky to get to grips with but learning the different forms is a vital step in learning the German language. The form that the personal pronoun takes is dependent on the case of the sentence. The […]

Verbs in German are very structured and often follow fairly straight forward rules. Knowing these rules can really help when forming a sentence and knowing which form of the verb you need to use. All German verbs are made up of 2 parts, the stem and the ending. The stem is the unique and main […]

8 Common German Verbs We have listed here 8 common German verbs and how they are formed depending on who or what you are referring to. These verbs are sagen (to say), lesen (to read), schreiben (to write), essen (to eat), nehmen (to take), müssen (to have to), schlafen (sleep) and brauchen (to need). It’s […]

German Word Order We have put together this quick reference guide to help you understand the word order in typical German sentences. This is one of the biggest aspects to learning German and one of the first challenges to get your head round. Practice makes perfect and soon the word order will be natural to […]

8 Common German Verbs We have listed here 8 of the most common German verbs and how they are formed depending on who or what you are referring to. These verbs are sein (to be), haben (to have), gehen (to go), machen (to do, to make), kommen (to come), wollen (to want), können (to be […]

Kein and Nicht? One of the first confusions you will encounter when learning the German language is: What’s the difference between kein and nicht and when should you use them? The problem arises because in English we just have one word that covers both: not. This means you now have to think about the context […]

Describing the German Adjectives So, to make sure we’re all on the same page, adjectives are descriptive words like young, old, beautiful etc. In German, adjectives change their endings depending on whether the person or thing you are referring to is masculine, feminine or neuter and whether singular or plural. It also depends on the […]

The German Cases Right, let’s get stuck into the heart of the German language, the cases. There are four cases in the German language: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. The cases are an important part of German grammar as they are responsible for the endings of adjectives, indefinite articles and when to use which personal […]

How to use German Prepositions German prepositions can be tricky to get to grips with. We have compiled this guide to help you understand and learn the correct way to use them. Some of them use the accusative and some use the dative case. On top of this, there are also some that can be […]