What if I told you that every object you can think of is either masculine, feminine, neuter or plural? What if I told you you'll have to address them using the right article (der, die, das)?

Oh, and one more thing: all nouns are always capitalised!

This table displays Nominativ articles, which we use when the dog, cat or car is the SUBJECT of the sentence. More specifically, they're called definite articles because we use them to refer to a specific dog, cat or car. At first, remembering the gender of every single object might feel like a lot, but hey — if you can remember your phone number, you got this 😄

I have amazing news for you. It's not all random. Remember this is German, not French.

Certain endings almost always belong into a specific gender. Learning to recognise these patterns will help you make better guesses — but ultimately, the most reliable strategy is to learn each noun together with its article from the very beginning. Here's a short list of those endings:

While in English most times we just add an -s to singular words (eg. the dog → the dogs), here there's a wide range of patterns, and they don't always follow a single clear logic.

Sometimes you add -e, sometimes -er, sometimes -n, sometimes nothing changes at all… and occasionally there's even a vowel shift! (eg. der Mann → die Männer) - O mein Gott...

So far, we've only worked with der, die, das & die (plural).
In English, all four of these words translate as "the". But what about "a/an"?

Well, in German these words are gendered too. Aber natürlich!

Note that the masculine and neuter articles are the same in this table. Also note that there's no plural indefinite article:

German speakers are so pessimistic that they have two different words for negative sentences.

To know when to use „kein/e", just pretend you're a cowboy.
eg. You're no stranger / I have no time / That's no rodeo.

For everything else, use „nicht".
eg. Ich arbeite nicht / Ich arbeite nicht aus Lima / Das ist nicht gut.

What if I told you that you'll have to address every single object you can think of using their preferred pronoun (er, sie, es)?

Is the apple red? - Ja, Mann...He is red! Is the banana yellow? - Ja, Mann...She is yellow! Is the car blue? - Ja, Mann...It is blue.

German has some of the longest words in the universe. The thing is the language allows you to connect words like legos to be as specific as you desire.

For instance, if you wanted to refer to "the leg of the desk that you work at when you are staying at your summer holiday house", you could simply create a new word that summarizes all of that. The Sommerferienwohnungsschreibtischbein

This may be an extreme example, but clustering words this way is as Germanic as a Strudel. As a matter of fact, the longest official German word is:

It's the name of a law, called "Law for the delegation of monitoring tasks related to cattle meat labeling". Don't even try to pronounce it. I have and I wouldn't recommend it.

The key here is to stay calm when you come across long words, try to disassemble them to see if you recognise any words within them, and remember that each word tells you something about the following one to the right.
The very last one gives away the essence of the word and its gender.

For example, "Kaffeemaschine" is a machine (last word) that makes coffee — not a coffee that makes machines. It's also feminine, because Maschine (last word) is feminine.

My father, my mother, my car, my friends. I AM THE OWNER, so the word is always MY. Aber nicht auf Deutsch, mein Freund... In German, we also pay attention to the gender and number of what we own:

This pattern repeats for every owner, so I trust you'll be able to complete the following table:

These are the verbs we generally use together with another verb (e.g. can, must, will, want, etc.)
We generally say "I can't BELIEVE it. Must you LIE to me? Will we ever LOVE each other again like we used to? - and that sort of stuff.

🌭 Give a German speaker two verbs and they'll turn them into a sandwich before you can say „Bratwurst“:

1. Hauptsätze: modal verb in 2nd position - Ich muss morgen nicht arbeiten.
2. W-Fragen: modal verb in 2nd position - Warum musst du morgen nicht arbeiten?
3. Ja/Nein-Fragen: modal verb in 1st position - Musst du morgen nicht arbeiten?

🍋 Easy peasy, Zitrone squeezy.

In this lesson we learned that in German every noun has a gender. While there's no single rule that always tells you the correct gender, there are useful clues that can guide you, like word endings. As to forming plurals, it's harder than finding a Swiss train that's late.

The distinction here is not person vs object, but rather gender-based. This distinction is important when using the words the, a/an, no and it.

We also learned that to use words like my, your, his, her and so on, we need to bear in mind the gender of who we're talking about. So in order to say "My school is big" or "My dog is big" you need to consider that it's your school but also that it's feminine.

We learned that compound words are extremely common in German, and that the last noun within them determines their gender. As to forming plurals, it's harder than finding a Swiss train that's late.

We also learned that to use words like my, your, his, her and so on, we need to bear in mind the gender of who we're talking about. So in order to say "My school is big" or "My dog is big" you need to consider that it's your school but also that it's feminine.

Oh ja! Auch noch... we also took a break from the intricate world of gender and learned most modal verbs, which have an odd conjugation (given that the 1st person conjugation doesn't end in -e and the 3rd person conjugation does not end in -t, which makes them both identical). These verbs are often used together with another verb in infinitive so in classic German fashion we use both verbs to make a Brötchen, wrapping all the juicy information inside them.

If you can follow this summary and explain it in your own words, you're just a few steps away from enlightenment. So fasten your seatbelt, because in the next lesson your whole world will be turned upside down.