For example, the three common pieces of cutlery all have different genders: das Messer ("knife") is neuter, die Gabel ("fork") is feminine, and der Löffel ("spoon") is masculine. Furthermore, in German, the gender of nouns without natural gender is not comprehensively predictable. However, gender and sex don't have to agree as in: das Weib (old, regional or anthropological: "woman" a cognate of the English "wife"), der Mensch ("human", male or female), der Gast ("guest", male or female the feminine Gästin is obsolete). However there exist several notable counterexamples such as das Mädchen ("girl") and das Fräulein ("miss"), since the diminutive forms ending in -chen or -lein are grammatically neuter. Nouns denoting a person, such as die Frau ("woman") or der Mann ("man"), often agree with the natural gender of what is described. Most German nouns are of one of these genders.
German has all three genders of late Proto-Indo-European-the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter. Main article: Grammatical gender in German Unlike modern English, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese, units are placed before tens as in Early Modern English, Danish, Dutch, Yiddish and Frisian. Numerals are similar to other Germanic languages. In addition, some prepositions combine with some of the articles. Owing to the gender and case distinctions, the articles have more possible forms. For example, in comparison to the -s added to third-person singular present-tense verbs in English, most German verbs employ four different suffixes for the conjugation of present-tense verbs, namely - e for the first-person singular, - st for the informal second-person singular, - t for the third-person singular and for the informal second-person plural, and - en for the first- and third-person plural, as well as for the formal second-person singular/plural. Accordingly, German has more inflections than English, and uses more suffixes. There are three genders and four cases, and verbs are conjugated for person and number. German has retained many of the grammatical distinctions that some Germanic languages have lost in whole or in part. The grammar of the German language is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages.Īlthough some features of German grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of English in that it has, among other things, cases and gender in nouns and a strict verb-second word order in main clauses.
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