Connect2German

In the previous sections, we have looked at 3 components of German grammar:

All of these share one thing in common, and that is that they all play a role in determining what the form of an article is. Remember, when we were talking about Part 3 “Gender”, we discussed briefly that the gender of the noun is important to remember because the article showing the gender can change forms. We have already seen that the article can change when a noun becomes plural [der Hund / die Hunde]. But “number” this is just one way it can change.

While the article “the” is always “the” in English – and the article “a/an” is always “a/an” – there are 3 things that can influence the form the article takes in German, and those 3 are the ones listed above (and coincidentally, the ones we have already gone over in the previous 3 parts) – “case”, “gender”, and “number”.

Putting It All Together: Case, Gender, & Number

#1 “Gender”
Recall the articles from part 3 when we looked at “gender”. These show the articles for the word “the” in German, and there are 3 forms for “gender” (masculine, feminine, neutral). So the article changes based on the gender.

der Hund (masculine)
die Katze (feminine)
das Buch (neutral)

#2 “Number”
But the examples above are only for singular things. What about plurals? Number also changes the form of the article. Let’s recall the plural forms:

Singular

der Hund [the dog]
die Katze [the cat]
das Buch [the book]

#3 “Case”

There is one more item in addition to Gender and Number, and that is Case. Recall that case is essentially just showing the function or role a noun/pronoun has in the sentence. Is is the subject/direct object/indirect object?

Let’s use what we already know to show how “Case” can now change the form of the article.

A. Der Hund trinkt Wasser. [The dog is drinking water.]
B. Er sieht den Hund. [He sees the dog.]

In sentence A, the dog is the subject of the sentence because it is the focus and it is doing the drinking. In sentence B, he (Er) is the subject because he is doing the seeing. The thing that he is seeing is the dog, so the dog is the direct object. Because it is now the direct object, the article for dog (Hund) is now “den”.

The same thing will happen with other articles if they change from the subject to the object. This was just an example with the masculine form.

Go To Part 6 (Summary)
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