Willkommen (welcome) to you first steps to learning German. As you may know, German is a Germanic language just like English, meaning that they have many similarities. This doesn't necessarily mean that German will be easy to learn, but you'll get used to the basic rules pretty quick if you pay close attention to how they work at first since the rules rarely ever change unlike in English.
The best place to start would be the nominative case of the personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, etc.). They follow the English personal pronouns very closely with the exception that German has a formal and an informal way of saying "you" while English doesn't. The German nominative case is as follows:
ich- I wir-we
du- you(informal) ihr- you(plural)
er/sie/es- he/she/it sie/Sie- they/you(formal)
In German, each of these personal pronouns has a distinct ending that goes to the end of the verb that it does. Before learning this, it's best to first learn what German verb even looks like and how it works, grammar wise. A German verb starts in the infinitive form before conjugation and it consists of two pieces: the stem of the verb, and the ending. The stem is the part you take and add the pronoun endings to depending o the personal pronouns it's being used with. The ending of the verb however is usually either an "-en" or just an "-n" and this gets cut of the stem in conjugation with a personal pronoun.
Let's use a very easy verb gehen, which means "to go". This verb ends in an "-en" so that will get cut off, leaving us with geh. Now, holding onto the stem of this verb, let's quickly go over what the endings are for each personal pronoun.
ich: verb stem+ e wir: verb stem+ en
du: verb stem+ st ihr: verb stem+ t
er/sie/es: verb stem+ t sie/Sie: verb stem+ en
As you might have noticed, there are three sie's that all sound the same, but they differ in some way or another in the written form and conjugation. Also the sie/Sie form will always follow the wir form in any conjugation you'll find in German. One last thing before we conjugate; German does not use helping verbs in the present case so, for example, ich gehe can mean "I go" or "I'm going". So let's use the verb gehen with these now and see how it works.
ich gehe- I go wir gehen- we go
du gehst- you go ihr geht- you all go
er/sie/es geht- he/she/it goes sie/Sie gehen- they/you go
Gehen is a Schwachverbe, meaning "weak verb" or easy verb, since it follows German language rules and isn't challenging like a Starkverbe, meaning "strong verb" or irregular verb that has it's own rules.
Before ending this lesson, I'd like to introduce a few more easy verbs and show their conjugation since they're a bit irregular in spelling.
Heißen- to be called: used when giving your name; example ich heiße Erik- I'm called Eric (I'm Erik, my name's Erik, etc.)
ich heiße- I'm called wir heißen- we're called
du heißt- you're called ihr heißt- you're all called
er/sie/es heißt- he's/she's/it's sie/Sie heißen- they're/you're called
Notice that the du form only added a t to the verb stem since it ended in an ß(S-set) that already makes the sound of two S's cause that's what it is, two S's set into a letter that makes a sharp S sound so an S cannot be added at the end of a verb stem like heißen.
Sehen- to see or look
ich sehe- I see wir sehen- we see
du siehst- you see ihr seht- you all see
er/sie/es sieht- he/she/it sees sie/Sie sehen- they/you see
This verb has a stem change in the du and er/sie/es forms where an i is added before the e, making the "ee" sound like in ''sheep".
That's it for this lesson. You should understand how Germans change th verb to match with personal pronouns and the nominative case. Au
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The Guide to German: for English speakers
SachbücherIn this book, we go over how and why German works. The rules are explained and thorough. The best way to learn German, or any language, is to learn the rules and understand the properties. The grammar will come naturally when the method is learned.
