Basic German Grammar Topics

About Course

CEFR A1 Level: German A1.1 and A1.2

CORE Languages offers bite size courses lasting about 10 weeks each. We split A1.1 into two courses to offer flexibility for your scheduling and the option to review specific topics without repeating a much longer course.

Level A1.1 is a course designed for beginners, someone who has had no previous experience with German. It covers basic vocabulary, verbs in the present tense and the German sentence structure. The activities in Level 1 focus on giving basic information about yourself, understanding numbers and how to tell the time. And continues to focus on the present tense, adding separable and irregular verbs. It also looks at the past tenses of haben and sein as well as accusative objects. Conversational topics of this level include shopping for groceries, the daily routine and family.
Level A1.2 focuses on the German imperative forms and the first introduction to the Perfekt tense as well as modal verbs. Students will learn about tourism in Berlin and understanding as well as actively giving directions. Another topic is finding an apartment and understanding classified ads with their typical abbreviations. The Perfekt tense, adding irregular verbs and the Perfekt tense with sein. We complete the modal verbs and use them in contexts such as health and professional life. This level also deals with reading and writing e-mails in the present and past tense, and making private and business-related phone calls..

After completing these levels, you’ll be able to:

understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type.
introduce yourself and others and ask and answer questions about personal details such as where they live, people they know and things they have.
interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.

At CORE Languages, as part of this German curriculum you will learn the following (and more):

A1.1-Greetings and Farewells; Introductions; Saying where one is from; Saying what languages one speaks; Asking and telling how one is doing; Talking about Family; Counting; Talking about where one is from; Talking about others (he, she, we, you, they); Filling out registration forms; Talking about what one has; Naming groceries; Expressing not having and needing things; Talking about what things are not (kein, keine); Expressing prices, units and packaging; Buying items over the counter; Ordering food; Talking about one’s apartment; Comparing things; Talking about furniture; Reading apartment ads; Telling time; Talking about daily routines (split verbs); Expressing dates; Using cardinal and ordinal numbers; Describing what one does at different times of the day; Talking about the weather; Expressing not having things (accusative); Talking about hobbies and free time; Talking about what one can and cannot do; Talking about what one wants; Expressing things in the past; Talking about daily routines in the past; Naming days of the week; Naming months.

A1.2-Talking about jobs and professions; Talking about duration (for & seit); Naming years; Telling one’s life-story; Looking for jobs; Expressing what one has to do (muss); Giving instructions (imperative); Expressing permissions (dürfen); Filling out registration forms; Asking for clarification; Naming body parts; Expressing pain; Expressing belonging (unser, euer, ihr, etc.); Interacting at the doctor; Writing excuses; Making appointments on the phone; Giving directions (review of cardinal and ordinal numbers); Describing locations (Dativ+prepositions of location); Expressing where one is and where on is going (prepositions zu & nach); Asking for the location of places; Expressing sequences in time (vor, nach, bei); Giving precise times in relation to one another (in); Expressing requests politely (könnten; würden); Talking about the function of things; Leaving messages; Complaining about broken equipment; Naming items of clothing; Expressing likes and dislikes; Referring to items without naming them (den, die, das, mir, dir, ihm, ihr, etc.); Talking about taste and preferences; Asking about items and identifying specific items (welche, diese, etc.); Expressing belonging (gehören); Talking about dates and duration; Using accusative pronouns (mich, dich, etc.); Writing and understanding text messages in German; Reading and writing invitations; Talking about holidays in Germany; Writing formal letters.

Course Content

German Gender of Nouns
All German nouns are one of three genders: masculine, feminine or neutral. When you’re learning German, it’s important to remember that the word, not the thing, has a gender. Although they don’t always make sense, they are something you have to learn. That’s because in German, the gender of a noun is part of its identity. If you say or write a German word without the article that dictates gender, you won’t be using the noun correctly.

German Nominative
In German the nominative is often referred to as the “who-case” (“der Werfall”) , because you can use the question words “who ” or “ what ” to find out what the subject of the sentence is.

German Numbers
0-null 1-eins 2-zwei 3-drei 4-vier 5-fünf 6-sechs 7-sieben 8-acht 9-neun 10-zehn

German Adjectives
German has all the same adjective concepts that English does, yes … but how adjectives are used is very different, mainly because of tricky little adjective endings (i.e. declensions) you frequently have to use as part of the overarching German Case System. Many students find adjective endings (and how they so often impact adjective-usage) to be the most difficult aspect of German to master.

German Personal Pronouns
German personal pronouns (ich, sie, er, es, du, wir, and more) work in much the same way as their English equivalents (I, she, he, it, you, we, etc.). When you study verbs, you should already understand pronouns well. They are a key element of most sentences that you should memorize and know by heart.

The Future Simple Tense (Futur I)
The German future tense (Futur I) is mostly used to express assumptions about the present or future in German. We can also use this tense to express future intentions, although, in spoken German, it is more common to use the present tense for this. We can translate the future tense with the English tenses: simple present or future with will or going to.

German Regular Verbs
The present tense is one of two verb tenses in German that consist of finite forms. This means that the verb itself is inflected to provide all of the grammatical information necessary to understand its role in the sentence. The German present tense is usually formed by dropping the –en or –n from the infinitive and adding personal endings (-e, -(e)st, (e)t, –en, -(e)t, –en) to the remaining infinitive stem.

German Plural Formation
A plural noun expresses that there is more than one person, object, idea etc. To form plural nouns in German, we can add -n/-en, -e, -r/-er, or -s to the end of the noun. The rules for plural noun formation in German grammar are listed below.

German Accusative Case and Haben
You use the "Akkusativ", when you want to describe what is happening to a person or a thing. This person or thing is the grammatical object.

German Word Order
English tends to rely mostly on word order to indicate the grammatical function of a word or phrase. German relies more on inflections to show function. Endings, such as those indicating the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases in three different genders, allow for some greater flexibility in clause construction.

German Definite Articles
A definite article (der Definitartikel) is that tiny word in English we refer to as "the." In German, we have three: der, die, das. As in English, they are also placed before the noun (or their modifying adjectives). In German, however, each of the definite articles has a gender.

German Indefinite Articles
In German there are several varieties of indefinite articles, which change depending on the gender of the noun being modified, whether the noun is singular or plural, and the case of the noun in the sentence.

German Negation
Negation or negative sentences in German grammar are formed with the words nicht (not) and kein (no/none). The tricky part is understanding when to use nicht and when to use kein and where to put them in a sentence. Learn about the word order of negative sentences in German and when to use nicht or kein.

German Modal Verbs
Modal verbs are a special class of verbs. You will most likely always use and find them in company with another verb. The six modal verbs in German are: dürfen, können, mögen, müssen, sollen, wollen.

German Separable Prefix Verbs
Separable prefixes offer a large set of possibilities for the formation of new verbs. In general, these elements provide either a more precise, or a significantly different meaning of the modified verb. Thus they serve as the "verb complement". In German, most, but not all, separable prefixes are derived from prepositions and retain much of the meaning that they had in that form.

German Coordinating Conjunctions
Coordinating conjunctions in German are words that can be used to connect other words, phrases or clauses without affecting the word order of the sentence. These conjunctions are: und, oder, aber, denn, beziehungsweise, sondern, doch, jedoch, and allein.

German Konjunktiv I

German Possessive
Possessive pronouns indicate possession. There are dependent and independent possessive pronouns in German grammar, both types must agree with their noun in case, gender and number.

German-Present Perfect of Regular Verbs
The English present perfect tense is used to refer to an event that happened in the past but continues (or at least might continue) in the present. For example, the sentence “I have lived in Charleston, South Carolina for six years” suggests that you might still be living in Charleston. Unlike English, das Perfekt doesn’t signify an ongoing event. Instead, it refers to a past event or action which has been completed. It’s also the past tense that’s most commonly used in German conversations, so you need to understand it if you want great speaking skills!

German Present Perfect-Irregular Verbs
In German, there are about 150 strong verbs. The vowel, which normally changes in the verb, is called “Ablaut”. There are three typical patterns of “Ablaut” changes: e – i – a: “gehen – ging – gegangen” a – u – a: “fahren – fuhr – gefahren” i – a – u: “finden – fand – gefunden”

German Present Perfect-Mixed Verbs
In German, weak verbs follow a very particular pattern of conjugation. In addition to strong – or irregular – verbs, there is a third category of verbs: irregular weak verbs. The list of these mixed German verbs is: brennen, bringen, denken, kennen, nennen, rennen, senden, wenden and wissen.

German Dative Case
The German dative case is used to indicate the indirect object of a sentence. It answers the question: To or for whom?

German Two-Way Prepositions
Most German prepositions are always followed by the same case, but two-way prepositions are prepositions that can take either the accusative or dative case. There are nine of these two-way prepositions: an auf hinter neben in über unter vor zwischen

German Dative Case Prepositions
In English, prepositions take the objective case (object of the preposition) and all prepositions take the same case. In German there are several grouping that are followed by a certain German case. Here is a list of German dative prepositions (nouns are always followed by the dative case): aus außer bei mit nach seit von zu gegenüber

German Conditionals
In German, subjunctive forms are used much more frequently than in English, to express uncertainty, speculation or doubt.

German Dative Verbs
The German dative case is used to indicate the indirect object of a sentence. It’s also used after certain verbs and prepositions.

German Simple Past Tense
In German, the simple past is referred to as Präteritum. In English, the simple past is often used to discuss past events that have a definite timeframe, referring to when something happened. In German, it can be used the same way, though it’s generally used more in writing vs regular conversation.

German Imperative
The German imperative is a form of the verb used when giving orders and instructions, for example, Please sit down!

German Comparative
A comparative adjective in English is one with -er added to it or more or less in front of it, that is used to compare people or things. (slower, more beautiful) In German, to say that something is easier, more expensive and so on, you add -er to the simple form of most adjectives.

German Temporal Prepositions
Prepositions of time or temporal prepositions show the relationship of these things to time. Prepositions of time correspond to the questions “When/how long?”

German Present Perfect-Separable Prefix Verbs
Separable prefixes offer a large set of possibilities for the formation of new verbs. In general, these elements provide either a more precise, or a significantly different meaning of the modified verb. Thus they serve as the "verb complement". In German, most, but not all, separable prefixes are derived from prepositions and retain much of the meaning that they had in that form.

German Irregular Verbs
In German, there are about 150 strong verbs. The vowel, which normally changes in the verb, is called “Ablaut”. There are three typical patterns of “Ablaut” changes: e – i – a: “gehen – ging – gegangen” a – u – a: “fahren – fuhr – gefahren” i – a – u: “finden – fand – gefunden”

German Question Words
In order to ask basic questions in German, you’ll need to memorize some new vocabulary. Here are thirteen German question words you can use in everyday conversation.

German Present Perfect-Inseparable Prefix Verbs

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About Course

Course Content

German Nominative In German the nominative is often referred to as the “who-case” (“der Werfall”) , because you can use the question words “who ” or “ what ” to find out what the subject of the sentence is.

German Numbers 0-null 1-eins 2-zwei 3-drei 4-vier 5-fünf 6-sechs 7-sieben 8-acht 9-neun 10-zehn

German Plural Formation A plural noun expresses that there is more than one person, object, idea etc. To form plural nouns in German, we can add -n/-en, -e, -r/-er, or -s to the end of the noun. The rules for plural noun formation in German grammar are listed below.

German Accusative Case and Haben You use the "Akkusativ", when you want to describe what is happening to a person or a thing. This person or thing is the grammatical object.

German Indefinite Articles In German there are several varieties of indefinite articles, which change depending on the gender of the noun being modified, whether the noun is singular or plural, and the case of the noun in the sentence.

German Modal Verbs Modal verbs are a special class of verbs. You will most likely always use and find them in company with another verb. The six modal verbs in German are: dürfen, können, mögen, müssen, sollen, wollen.

German Coordinating Conjunctions Coordinating conjunctions in German are words that can be used to connect other words, phrases or clauses without affecting the word order of the sentence. These conjunctions are: und, oder, aber, denn, beziehungsweise, sondern, doch, jedoch, and allein.