Adorably Arduous Adjectives (Level: A2)

Alliterations have the effect of playfulness, while also giving some hard truths. Adjectives are wonderful and bring bland writing and confusing thoughts to clarity. They can be adorable, but in German, a bit arduous, or rather strenuous, when you are learning to use them correctly. Let’s take a look at a sentence.

That is the red ball.

In English, you would say “the red ball” but in German it depends. It can be “der rote Ball”, “den roten Ball”, “dem roten Ball”, etc. Why? Because of rules! There are 2 things changing, the article “the” and the adjective “red”. Let’s break this down.

First, I like to look at the object, in this situation, the ball. “Ball” is masculine, “der Ball”. Second, you can look which case (e.g. Nominativ, Akkusativ, Dativ, Genativ) the ball is in the sentence. In this sentence, what is the subject? Who or what is this sentence about? The ball is the subject, and so we are in the Nominativ case, and therefore, we use "der".

Das ist der "red" Ball.

So what do we do about the "red"? In English, the adjective "red" does not change, but in German, the adjective changes depending on the German case (Nominativ for us), the article (e.g. der vs. ein), and the noun gender (der, die, das, plural). For the Nominative case, see:
So we know that we are in the Nominative case with the definite/bestimmte article, and the masculine gender (der), so we add an “-e” at the end of the word "rot".

Das ist der rote Ball.

And now you have a perfect sentence! What about if the article wasn’t a definite/bestimmte article “the” and it was instead an indefinite/unbestimmte article “a”? You would go through the steps again, using the Adjektiv (unbestimmte Article) table.

Das ist ein roter Ball.

You have “ein” with “roter” because Ball is this sentence is nominative, uses an indefinite article, and is masculine. You can follow the table to add the correct endings. For more practice, you can use the exercise of the week (with answers) to practice this concept more! Good luck and until the next post!

German Exercise for the Week:
Übung für Verben und Adjektive 1 (Level: A2)
This will give you practice with the Nominative case adjectives and also provides you a table to reverence.

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