Some Thoughts on German Writing and Grammar        

Nouns:  The words for persons, places, things, and ideas; in any language.  
	
	Proper Nouns: Names of persons, places, things, or ideas.  
	
Quirky German Facts:

Writing:
٭٭When writing in the German Language, all Nouns are capitalized all the Time, not just Names, and not just at the Beginning of the Sentence.  

Gender:
٭٭In English, we have natural gender of nouns.  Female things are feminine, male things are masculine, and things without a gender are neuter.  

٭٭In German, we have grammatical gender.  Nouns are not assigned gender based only their nature, but also on grammar rules.  If there’s a disagreement, the grammar rules always win. That’s right, there’s no way around it.  You have to memorize the genders of nouns.  
	Examples of this:
1)	das Mädchen (the word for girl!)
2)	die Katze (even a male cat) (You may use der Kater to indicate a Tom cat)
3)	der Hund (even a female dog)

WARNING:   Some nouns in German have a different meaning when the article changes.  Failing to memorize the articles for such nouns might cause severe embarrassment.  
		Examples:   der Tor =fool       das Tor = door  
				der Junge=boy     das Junge = young animal

Articles: There are precisely three articles that still exist in the entire English language; the, a, & an.  That’s it.  In German, the articles give us information about the gender, number, and case of the nouns we’re reading or hearing.  

 In Either English or German:
**“The” is the definite article; it refers to a specific noun.  The boy means one specific boy.  In German, the der-words are definite articles.
**“A” and “an” are indefinite articles; A boy means any person who fits the description of “boy.”  In German, the ein-words are indefinite articles.
	
Gender: As we’ve already established, German nouns are in one of three genders; Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter (He, she, it).

Number:  There are two numbers for nouns in German; singular (one man, one woman, one apple) & plural (2 or more of any noun—so, two apples would be grammatically identical to 437 apples, etc.)

Cases of Nouns:    The case of a noun depends almost entirely on how it’s being used in the sentence. German word order is different from English word order, and you will often have to rely on the cases of German nouns to tell you who is doing what to whom.  All nouns in German will be in one of the following four cases.
Nominative case nouns are the subject of a sentence or clause.
Accusative case nouns are the direct objects of verbs or prepositions.
Dative case nouns are the indirect objects of verbs or prepositions.
Genitive case nouns possess (show ownership of) other nouns.

Example sentences in English:
1)	The man gives a book to the child of his sister. 
2)	Give me the pen back!
3)	Are you going to the supermarket?
Der-words chart:
Case	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural 	
Nominative	der	die	das	die	
Accusative	den	die	das	die	
Dative	dem	der	dem	den	
Genitive	des	der	des	der	
Adjectives inflected like the Definite Article 
dieser (this)	mancher (many)	
jener (that)	solcher (such)	
jeder (each, every) 	welcher (which)	
Ein-words chart:
Case	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural	
Nominative	ein	eine	ein	eine	
Accusative	einen	eine	ein	eine	
Dative	einem	einer	einem	einen	
Genitive	eines	einer	eines	einer	

Adjectives inflected like the Indefinite Article 
kein (no, not any)	ihr (her or their)	
mein (my)	unser (our)	
dein (your [familiar singular]) 	euer (your [familiar plural])	
sein (his or its)	Ihr (your [formal])