German is hard

Learning German is a difficultish thing. You have to:

• Understand the concepts of Person(me, you, her), Plural(me, us) and Gender(masc, feminine, neutral) (easy)
• Use declensions. 4x4 combinations of terminations for words that you absolutely have to memorize/internalize (hard)
• Memorize or learn to guess the Gender of most nouns (hard)
• Memorize the 5 forms a verb can be conjugated(Present, Past, Participle, Konjuntiv I, Konjuntiv II), which can be irregular.

These are the absolute minimum cheatsheets I collected in order to familiarize myself these cases quickly. To memorize/internalize these concepts I will be just doing exercises while looking at the cheatsheets until I do not need to use the cheatsheets.

On concepts to understand:

Use case table:

Here are the cheatsheets I used to practice grammar related declensions:

Declension patterns:

So with determinants we will mostly use Weak declension, without we will use Strong declension, with 3 exceptions in total. Alternatively written like this:

Is there a determinant?

Yes.Is the determinant at use ein (♂️0️⃣nom./0️⃣acc)?

Yes.Yes. Strong declension.

Yes.No. Weak declension.

No. Is it ♂️0️⃣ Genitive?

No.Yes. Weak declension.

No.No. Strong declension.

Bonus:

• Declensed quantifiers or pronouns act as determiners. (e.g. jeder,mancher,alle )
• Undeclensed quantifiers or nouns do not act as determiners. (e.g. viel, dergleichen, ein wenig, etwas)
• Declensed quantifiers only used in plural do not act as determiners. (e.g. viele, wenige, einige)

Declension terminations table ( [None] / Str / Weak ):

Note that the indefinite pronoun man declenses according to masculine.

Prepositions

Connectors

The coordination(conjunctions) are easy to know, but I struggled discerning whether something was a subordination (subjunction) or a coordination that takes position 1(connective adverb). A general rule of thumb to discern them, is that since the latter are adverbs you will see them in other positions(note that damit can just be both).

• Coordination: aber, denn, doch, oder, sondern, und
• Subordination: als, bevor, bis, da, damit, dass, ehe, falls, indem, nachdem, obwohl, seit, seitdem, sodass, solange, sooft, während, weil, wohingegen, (interrogative pron./adv. : wo, wie, was, warum, ob …)
• Coordination(but adding 1 complement to the Coordinated sentence): 0️⃣, allerdings, also, andererseits, aschließend, dabei, dadurch, dafür, dagegen, damit, danach, dann, darauf, darum, davor, dazu, deshalb, deswegen, einerseits, ferner, folglich, genauso, immerhin, inzwischen, jedoch, schließlich, seitdem, später, trotzdem, vorher, weder … noch , zuvor, zwar

Article/ Rel. Pronouns table :

Pronouns table :

Plural terminations:

Credit to https://germanwithlaura.com/plurals/ , section “Plurals According to Hierarchical Rules " for summarizing it nicely. This is just a linear rewriting of the table there:

Gender table

Small note

Im < Am < Um To remember in the silliest way possible think of the word “Umami” (delicious/tasty in Japanese and a work that has infiltrated global culture.First thing that comes to mind with it is “Shiitake”)

Im: Workweek (Arbeitswoche), Week, Month, Seasons

Am: Times of day, Days, Weekends

Um: Hour

Adj

A bit of conjugation

Base conjugation

A small note on weird things:

• Double accusative verbs: frage,kosten,bitten,lehrt

• Declension does not apply if not in a declension pattern. This means faraway adjectives do not have to be coherent with the noun they refer to. E.g:

  “Die Katze ist gross” -> Correct “Die Katze ist grosse” -> Incorrect

• My first impression of the word “doch” is that it is utterly broken. Why would you have a word with 4 overlapping meanings that can be combined in a sentence?

  • “Kommst du nicht?”
  • “Doch, Ich dachte, du kommst nicht, doch du bist doch gekommen und hast doch nichts mitgebracht”

Credit to:

https://germanwithlaura.com/ -> All the grammar is extensively explained there and it is a GREAT resource. If you are like me and need an overall grasp on how a system works before you actually begin with exercises, you may want to spend a weeking going through the entirety of her text.

https://german.net/ -> A ton of practice exercises

https://www.vhs-lernportal.de/ -> Practice exercises as well, more focused towards [A1,B2]

https://www.linguee.de/deutsch-englisch/uebersetzung/%C3%9Cbung.html <- I found this personally the best to get the most accurate equivalent of a word in another language. I alternated between the English and Spanish to Deutsch.

https://www.verbformen.com/conjugation/?w=werden <- Useful, irregular verbs can be tricky to recognize.

https://www.deepl.com/en/translator https://translate.google.com/?sl=de&tl=es&text=entgegenkommen&op=translate <- Best translators.

https://yourdailygerman.com/ <- This guy explains many very-idiomatic things in a thorough way. VERY helpful with prepositions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_modal_particles <- I should add this, but not a priority for a basic lvl

https://de.wiktionary.org/ <- Most official gender noun searcher that exists

Building spoken understanding (with personal rating)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfE_0HMOqOM&list=PL6MDL3np1hEpNCe93HYgBTdo6gY5yM43a -> Slow spoken german playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=SX7qE7G2e_c -> Slow spoken children tales

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjoGmN2CfFY&list=PLOB_20Li2d8jSl9u0fCVragBUn5M99zzK -> Normal speed playlist #1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tskf6jmiqqc&list=PLOB_20Li2d8jGz1VN1Lcp34iZW3MbDvrF -> Normal speed playlist #2

10/10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6khA8eZaD4&list=PLM45RE_YsqS5-S58HSmYOhu2m-tRul9jW&index=1 -> “Friends"like short series with easy vocabulary. Humor actually funny, easy vocabulary, and pointing (naturally) to common misconceptions on German learner that come from English

6.5/10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-eDoThe6qo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg5P2w_Ro1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkufozluseI -> Nicos Weg. These are 3 videos that explain a story, used as vehicle to work in some exercises simultaneously. I personally did not like my first interaction with Nicos Weg, as I was in A1.1 and did not follow anything, and things did just not make sense. Now, as I am studying for B1, I should also say that at level B1; the 3 videos feel just right. Some characters speak way too fast for A-level understanding and use complicated grammar, but for B1 it works well enough. Compared to Extra, most misunderstandings feel a lot more artificial(especially early on) and Nico’s understanding of German is completely inconsistent. In summary, good practice for a B-level, not the most fun but forces you to get comfortable with kind-of-standardized B-level vocabulary and German.

Real life practice:

http://pangea-projekt.de/teilprojekte/deutschkurse/

This is just a personal approach to German.