The German language has more forms for the verbs and the articles than the English language. But this does not mean that the German language is hard to learn. There are only some rules you must know to understand the structure of the language. This course will help you.
A simple sentence has three parts: subject, predicate and object. “The child sees the dog.” is such a simple sentence. “the child” is the subject, that means is the one, who is doing something: sees the dog. “sees” is the predicate, that describes, what the subject of sentence (“the child”) is doing: “see”. “the dog" is the object of the sentence, that means it is that, to which the action of the subject is directed. The child sees what? - “the dog".
“The man” sees the tree. “The man” is the subject, the actor of the sentence. To find the subject in a sentence ask:
who sees the tree. The answer: "the man" shows you the subject, the one, who is acting.
In the sentence “The boy sees the man” the phrase the man” is the object. To find the object in a sentence ask:
what does the boy see? The answer: "the man "shows the object on what the action “seeing” is
directed.
If "the man" is the subject of the sentence or its object you can understand only by the position, where the phrase
is used in the sentence. If this is the beginning of the sentence “The man sees the house” than “the man” is the subject
(= the actor of the action), if the phrase is used at the end of the sentence “The boy sees the
man.”, then “the man” is the object (= the one, on whom the seeing of the boy is related). In the English language the rule
"subject (first of the sentence) - predicate (follows the subject) - object (follows on the predicate)" is strict.
Not so it is in the German language. But this we will see later.
Learn these words and then see the following examples. When you learn the German words you must also memorize the article (“der”) of the nouns and the change of the root of the verbs. Why that is necessary, we will see in the next lessons.
| the man | - | der Mann | (“der“ is the article) |
| he | - | er | |
| to see | - | sehen | (he sees - er sieht) |
| the tree | - | der Baum | |
| the boy | - | der Junge | |
| to kick | - | kicken | (he kicks - er kickt) |
| the ball | - | der Ball | |
| to hit | - | treffen | (he hits - er trifft) |
| the dog | - | der Hund | |
| the post man | - | der Postbote | |
| to bring | - | bringen | (he brings - er bringt) |
| the letter | - | der Brief | |
| to eat | - | essen | (he eats - er isst) |
| the apple | - | der Apfel |
In the English languge the article "the" is always the same. In the German languge the artice changes dependig on the function (subject or object) of the following noun. If the noun is the subject, then the article is "der", if the noun is the object, then the article is "den".