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:

Use Case	Grammar component	In simple terms	Example Johny (English)	Example Johny (Deutsch)
Nominativ	Subject	Who is doing the action	Johny is …	Johny ist ..
Accusativ	Direct Object	What receives action	I talk about the Johny	Ich spreche über den Johny
Dative	Indirect Object	To who/what the action goes	I talk science to the Johny	Ich spreche mit dem Johny über Wissenschaft
Genitive	Posessive	Ownership from another noun	Johny’s dog	Johny’s Hund

Declension patterns:

None	Strong	Weak	Noun
—-	Det.	Adj	Noun
ein-Word	[Adj]	—	Noun
—-	Adj	—	Noun
—-	det + Adj	—	Noun

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

Gender	Nominativ	Accusativ	Dative	Genitive
♂️	-/r/e	n	m/n	s/n
0️⃣	-/s/e	-/s/e	m/n	s/n
♀️	e	e	r/n	r/n
👪	e/n	e/n	n	s/n

Note that the indefinite pronoun man declenses according to masculine.

Article/ Rel. Pronouns table :

Gender	Nominativ	Accusativ	Dative	Genitive
♂️	der	den	DEM	DES/DESSEN
0️⃣	DAS	DAS	DEM	DES/DESSEN
♀️	DIE	DIE	DER	DER/DEREN
👪	DIE	DIE	DEN/denen	DER/DEREN

Pronouns table :

Nominativ	Accusativ	Dative	Reflexive (Acc/Dat)	Posessive
ich	mich	mir	(mich/mir)	mein-
du/Sie	dich/Sie	dir/Ihnen	(dich/dir)/sich	dein-/Ihrer
er/sie/es	ihn/sie/es	ihm/ihr/ihm	sich	sein-/ihr-/sein-
wir	uns	uns	uns	unsere-
ihr/Sie	euch/Sie	euch/Ihnen	euch	eur-
sie	sie	ihnen	sich	ihr-

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:

Priority	Case	Termination
—	—	—
1	♂️ + -ant	-[e]n
	-chen,-lein	Nothing
	♂️ + -er,-el,en	Nothing
	-a,-e,-i,-o,-u,-y	-s
	♂️ + -il,-sal	-e
	♀️ + -ast,-ling,-ich,-ig	-e
—	—	—
2	♀️	-[e]n
	weak nouns	-[e]n
—	—	—
3	English loanwords	-s
—	—	—
4	♂️ Monosyllables	Umlaud + -e
—	0️⃣ Monosyllables	Umlaud + -er
—	—	—
5	Default	-e

Gender table

♂️	0️⃣	♀️
—	—	—
-ant,-ast	-chen,-lein	-a,anz,-enz
-ich,-ig,-ismus	-ich,-il,-it	-ei,-ie,-in,-frau
-ling,-or,-us	-ma,-ment,-tel	-heit,-keit,-ik
	-tum,-um	-sion,-tion,-sis,-tät
		-ung,-ur,-schaft
—	—	—
—	words with Ge-	verbs ending in -t
—	—	—
60% of -en,-el,-er	70% of -nis,-sal	90% of -e
—	—	—
	foreign words:
	-al,-an,-ar,-är,-at
	-ent,-ett,-ier,-iv
	-o,-on

Prepositions

Case	Prepositions	Conditions
Akkusative	durch,für,gegen,ohne,um	Always
Dative	aus,ausser,bei,mit,nach,seit,von,zu,gegenüber	Always
2way	an,auf,hinter,in,neben,entlang,über,unter,vor,zwischen	Static(Dat) or Dynamic(Akk) object being referenced
Genitive	(an)statt, trotz, während,wegen, außserhalb,innerhalb,oberhalb	Always
	unterhalb,diesseits,jenseits,beid(er)seits, unweit	Always

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: Month, Seasons

Am: Times of day, Days

Um: Hour

Adj

Case	Transformation (besides declensions)
Normal	—
Comparative	-er + DECLENSION
Superlative	am .. -ten/ADJ + -te

A bit of conjugation

Base conjugation

Pronoun	Suffix
ich	-e
du/Sie	-st/-en
er/sie/es	-t
wir	-en
ihr	-t
sie	-en

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://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