German Genitive help?

Question

So German is really hard and Im trying to make sure that Im understanding everything with Genetive : ) I tried to look some of this stuff up ,but I cant find anything. I tried to do my best and was wondering if anyone could check it ?

Der/ Das- jedes, Die- jeder

Der/ Das - dieses, Die dieser

Der/ Das -manches, Die Mancher

Der/ Das - Alles, Die Aller

Der/ Das- meines, Die meiner

Der/ Das- deines, Die deiner

Der/ Das- seines, Die seiner

Der/ Das- ihres, Die ihrer

Der /Das -unseres,Die unserer

Der/ Das- eueres, Die euerer

Answer 1

Hey wildcat0,

sorry I am 40 years out of school, and I don't know if my termini technici of grammar are correct. The thing with your list is very simple. Each line forms an excample of a part of a sentence using the genitve in 1. masculin 2. neutrum and 3. feminin.

eg:

Der/ Das- jedes, Die- jeder

Der ... jedes ...  ----- Das ..... jedes .... ---- Die ..... jeder ....

Der Hut jedes Bayern, hat eine Feder.

Das Rad jedes Autos muss ausgewuchtet sein.

Der Mann jeder Frau hat ein schweres Leben.

Der/ Das - dieses, Die dieser

Der Hut dieses Mannes kommt aus Bayern.

Das Dach dieses Hauses hat Ziegel.

Die Tochter dieser Frau hat rote Haare.



and so on.

ok?

Gruß aus Hamburg

Heinz

@Alfa: "Das Haus von meinem Vater" That is not genitiv that is dativ and as we Germans say "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod." --- not good German - but spoken today :-( . It is true alot of people indeed the mayority use today dativ instead  of genitiv.

Answer 2

Alwin and other Natives.

One thing you have to try to understand about most Americans. Unless we are born in to a bilingual family. MOST never had German training or lessons, only recently have schools started to add it as a language to our school systems. 15 years ago there was just French or Spanish in most schools.

Now German is being taught more and in all honesty the grammar is the Harders part for us to learn. We try to convert our sentences directly from English into German so they do not come out correct. I am sure you know what I mean.

This is why we so often make these common mistakes and easy for you all, but they are not for us. There are words that you all use in English that are not always correct, but with american english it is much more forgiving than British english.

Knowing when to use Der, Die and Das can be very hard for us not knowing if the word after is Masculine, Feminine or neutral. We really need good grammar teachers here.

Hilmar has been great help for me learning better grammar. I speak fine but my grammar needs improvement.

That is this persons real problem similar to mine and it is not as easy as you think for us to learn it. You most happen to speak very good English but most of you took how many years of school in English? We had none in German until just the last decade or so.

I hope that explains why Grammar is so hard for us. We try to translate literally when you cannot do that. I know it but i still make errors. I wish I had a formal teacher. I have learned all I know from living there and friends there.

Answer 3

I am sorry but I could not understand the list you provided.

BUT, the genitiv and the other 'kasus' like nominativ, akkusativ and dativ

aren't too hard to remember. There are simple questions you can ask while building a sentence that will help you find the right 'kasus'.

1. Nominativ

Der Hund bellt.    Wer oder was bellt?  =>Der Hund

Die Maus quiekt. Wer oder was quiekt? => Die Maus

2.Genitiv

Ich werfe den Ball des Hundes.

Wessen Ball werfe ich? => (Der Ball) des Hundes

Ich sehe das Haus der Frau

Wessen Haus sehe ich?  => (Das Haus) der Frau

3.Dativ

Ich gebe dem Hund den Ball.

Wem gebe ich den Ball?  => Dem Hund

Ich gebe der Katze ein Bad?

Wem gebe ich ein Bad? => Der Katze

4. Akkusativ

Ich sehe den Hund.

Wen sehe ich? => Den Hund

Ich sehe die Katze.

Wen sehe ich? =>Die Katze

For the genitiv you have to add -es to all male and neutral (der Hund und das Haus => des Hundes, des Hauses) nouns and add nothing to all female nouns (die Katze => der Katze)

Answer 4

I'm native German and I really tried to make some sense of your list, but there isn't any. The German genitive is not so hard to understand, just use it like the English one, skipping the apostrophe, and when using a possevive pronoun, such as "sein" oder "ihr" just add "-es" at the end, taking the e as a connecting vowel and the s for the genitive.

There are certain prepositions that require the genitive afterwards, such like "wegen" ("because of"), but many more require the Dativ (3rd case), and in colloquial German, the genitive is rarely used; it gets replaced by the Dativ (3rd case). So I think you shouldn't bother about the Genitiv rules very much, but rather learn the flexing of nouns and pronouns in the Dativ and Akkusativ (3rd and 4th case); that's much more useful.

---

edit:

Something weird just crossed my mind; I imagined how it would be if you show up at a German police station saying

"Ich komme zu Ihnen wegen des umgefahrenen Verkehrsschildes, das ich gerade mit der Stoßstange meines Autos gestreift habe."

["I'm coming to you because of the flatted traffic sign I just hit with the bumper of my car."]

There are two genitives in that sentence, but still, the police would check you for alcohol, as nobody uses the genitive in real life.

"Guten Tag, ich habe ein Verkehrsschild umgefahren."

would be the way to explain what happened.

---

@Wulf, thanks a lot for the explanation. I know that German is a language which is hard to take, with its three (!) genders and the endless list of irregular verbs. Spanish, Italian, and even French are easier to learn, with just two genders (male and female), and a more comprehensive grammar. But German has a strong influence from slavic languages; the farther you go to the east (Czech Republic, Slovakia, for instance) the more difficult the grammar gets (with six cases insted of four, and three genders), and in Russia, even the alphabet changes, so you start all over and learn how to write like a six year old child. And I'm not talking about Greece right now, the only state of the European Union that doesn't use Latin script.

Answer 5

The genitive indicates the property: whose?

Männlich(he)    Weiblich(she)  Sachlich(it)

des                   der                des

eines                 einer             eines

jenes                 jeder             jedes...

But pay attention, because the genitive of the femenine looks like the nominative from the masculine (nominative "name" / determine  the noun, for this reason is frequenly with the verb to be  "sein" together".

To describe whom belongs something, there are 3 ways to express the genitive:

1.Das Haus meines Vaters (with the genitive pure).

2.Das Haus von meinem Vater ( with "von")

3.Peters Haus (only with first names, just add "s")

I know it is for us foreigner difficult, because what helps the German people ( wer oder was?, wen oder was?...), it does not help us a lot...

Try to feel the sense of every German declination and memorize their preposition  , as well as the typical verbs of each one). It helps a lot:

* Nominative: names the noun (frequently together with verbs like to be, become...)

*Accusative: direct object

*Dative : indirect object

*Genitive: determine the property (the easiest of all).

The company HUEBER has a serie of book with grammar exercises and clear explanations, the name is "Deutsch Üben"