Die Lernzettel
Study Material
Short, friendly explanations of the grammar behind every exercise — what a topic is, how it works, and the mistakes to watch for. Read a guide, then practise it next door.
Guides and practice sets point at each other — read the grammar here, then drill it next door. The count beside each level shows how far the library has got.
A1 — 14 guides
Pronouns
Personal pronouns in German (ich, du, er, sie…)
What German personal pronouns are and how they change with the case: ich/mich/mir, du/dich/dir, and the full table for nominative, accusative and dative.
Articles & gender
der, die, das — how German noun gender works
Why German nouns are der, die or das, what noun gender means, and reliable patterns and endings that tell you which article a noun takes.
Verbs
German present tense: how to conjugate verbs
How to conjugate regular German verbs in the present tense, the endings for each person, and the common vowel-changing and irregular verbs like sein and haben.
Word order
The verb-second rule (V2) in German word order
The single most important rule in German word order: in a main clause the conjugated verb is the second element — never the second word. How to count elements, why the subject jumps behind the verb, and the three places the rule does not apply.
Verbs
German modal verbs (können, müssen, wollen…)
The six German modal verbs, what each one means, how they push the main verb to the end of the sentence as an infinitive, and how to conjugate them.
Cases
Nominative and accusative in German — der or den?
When German uses nominative and when accusative, the wer/wen question that decides it, and why only the masculine article changes: der → den.
Pronouns
Possessive articles in German (mein, dein, sein…)
How to say my, your, his, her and our in German, why the ending depends on the noun's gender and case, and the full possessive table.
Pronouns
du vs Sie — formal and informal “you” in German
When to use the informal du and when to use the formal Sie in German, how the verb changes, and simple rules of thumb so you never sound rude.
Numbers
German numbers, dates and telling the time
How German numbers work (including the flipped 21 = einundzwanzig), how to say the date and days, and how to tell the time in everyday and official style.
Word order
Asking questions in German: word order & question words
The two ways to ask a question in German — yes/no questions with the verb first, and W-questions with a question word — plus the essential wer/was/wo/wann list.
Word order
kein or nicht? German negation made simple
German has two ways to say no: kein negates nouns, nicht negates everything else. The rule for choosing, where nicht actually goes in the sentence, and the handful of cases that trip people up.
Verbs
The German imperative (du, ihr, Sie)
How to tell someone to do something in German: the du form with no ending and no pronoun, the ihr form, the Sie form that keeps its pronoun, and the vowel changes that catch people out.
Nouns
German noun plurals and the umlaut
German has five plural endings and no rule that predicts them reliably, so plurals are learned with the noun. The five patterns, the ones that do hold, and how to say ä, ö, ü and ß out loud.
Orthography
German spelling: capital nouns and ß
Three rules that mark writing as German: every noun takes a capital letter, ß or ss depends on the length of the vowel before it, and a doubled consonant is how a short vowel is written down.
A2 — 12 guides
Verbs
Separable verbs in German (aufstehen, einkaufen…)
What separable verbs are, how the prefix splits off and jumps to the end of the sentence, and how they behave in questions, with modals and in the perfect tense.
Verbs
The German perfect tense (haben & sein)
How to talk about the past in everyday German with the perfect tense: choosing haben or sein, forming the past participle, and where the two parts go in the sentence.
Cases
Two-way prepositions (Wechselpräpositionen)
The nine German prepositions that take either the accusative or the dative, and the simple movement-vs-location rule that decides which case to use.
Word order
Word order after weil, dass and wenn (verb to the end)
How subordinating conjunctions like weil, dass, wenn and obwohl send the conjugated verb to the very end of the clause, and what happens when the clause comes first.
Adjectives
Comparative and superlative in German (größer, am größten)
How to compare things in German: the -er comparative with als, the am …-sten superlative, and the irregular forms of gut, viel, gern and hoch.
Word order
German time expressions and word order
When to use am, im and um, which time words need no preposition at all, and the rule that trips up every beginner: put the time first and the verb still has to come second.
Cases
German dative prepositions (mit, nach, bei…)
Eight prepositions always take the dative, with no choice to make: aus, außer, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu. The forms they need, the contractions, and why seit goes with the present tense.
Verbs
Reflexive verbs and the pronoun sich
Some German verbs will not work without a reflexive pronoun: sich freuen, sich ärgern, sich entschuldigen. The pronouns, where they go, and the accusative-versus-dative difference that changes the meaning.
Adjectives
German adjective endings
When an adjective needs an ending and when it needs none, and the three patterns that decide which ending: after der, after ein, and with no article at all.
Articles & gender
Declining der, die, das (and ein)
In German the article carries the case, so knowing a noun's gender is only half the job. Both full tables, and the one observation that makes the accusative almost free.
Verbs
Verbs with fixed prepositions (warten auf…)
German verbs come welded to a particular preposition, and it is almost never the one English uses. The pairs worth memorising, the case each one fixes, and the da- forms you need when the object is a thing.
Vocabulary
False friends and anglicisms in German
German words that look English and mean something else — bekommen, Gift, also, eventuell — and the English words German has borrowed but uses its own way.
B1 — 8 guides
Word order
Relative clauses and relative pronouns (der, die, das…)
How to build German relative clauses: choosing the relative pronoun by gender and case, and sending the verb to the end of the clause.
Verbs
Konjunktiv II — the German conditional (würde, hätte, könnte)
How to be polite and talk about hypotheticals in German: the würde + infinitive pattern, the key short forms wäre/hätte/könnte, and when to use each.
Verbs
The infinitive with zu (um zu, ohne zu, statt zu)
How to attach a second verb with zu, where zu goes inside a separable verb, the verbs that refuse zu altogether, and the um/ohne/statt … zu trio — including the same-subject rule that decides um zu against damit.
Word order
denn, weil or deshalb? One meaning, three word orders
German has three ways to join a cause to its consequence, and they differ only in what happens to the verb: denn changes nothing, weil sends it to the end, deshalb pushes it in front of the subject.
Verbs
Präteritum or Perfekt: which past tense
German has two ordinary past tenses and they are not interchangeable. Which one speech uses, which one writing uses, the handful of verbs that stay in the Präteritum even when you talk, and how to build it.
Verbs
The German verbs that take the dative
Most German verbs take an accusative object; a small group takes the dative instead — helfen, danken, gehören, gefallen, passen, antworten. Which they are, why gefallen turns the English round, and mir versus mich.
Word order
TeKaMoLo — time, reason, manner, place
When a German sentence carries several pieces of information at once, they go in a default order: temporal, kausal, modal, lokal. What the mnemonic means, when it applies, and when you can override it.
Style
German collocations: words that go together
Every word is correct and the sentence still sounds foreign. The verb-and-noun pairs German insists on — Verantwortung übernehmen, Kontakte pflegen, eine Entscheidung treffen — and the word choices that trip people up.
B2 — 4 guides
Word order
Advanced German connectors (obwohl, sodass, je … desto)
The connectors that make B2/C1 German flow: concession (obwohl, trotzdem), consequence (sodass, deshalb), and the je … desto comparison — with their word-order effects.
Verbs
The German passive: werden, worden, and when to use it
How the German passive is built with werden + Partizip II, the wird/ist distinction that changes the meaning, who gets von and who gets durch, and the traps: worden, dative verbs, and modals in a subordinate clause.
Cases
The German genitive and its prepositions
The case that shows possession and marks a text as written: des Mannes, der Frau, der Kinder. The endings, the prepositions that demand it, and why spoken German mostly avoids it.
Word order
The placeholder es in German sentences
German often opens a sentence with es that stands for nothing: Es ist üblich, dass…, Es fehlt an…, Es sind meist Töchter, die… What it is doing there, and when it disappears again.
C1 — 5 guides
Style
Nominalization in German — turning verbs into nouns
How advanced, formal German turns verbs and adjectives into nouns (das Lesen, die Entwicklung, das Wichtigste) — the patterns, the capitalization, and when to use them.
Verbs
Four alternatives to the German passive
Four ways German says “can be done” without werden: man, sich lassen, adjectives in -bar, and sein + zu. What each one implies, which register it belongs to, and where each of them cannot go.
Verbs
Funktionsverbgefüge: the formal register
The verb+noun pairs that carry German institutional language: in Betracht ziehen, zur Sprache bringen, einer Forderung Rechnung tragen. Which verb goes with which noun, why bringen and kommen are not interchangeable, and the cases that catch people out.
Verbs
Konjunktiv I: German reported speech
Konjunktiv I does not mark a tense, it marks whose claim it is: the reporter passes the words on without vouching for them. How to form it, why German keeps falling back on Konjunktiv II, and what it means when the forms suddenly stop.
Style
Extended attributes and participle phrases
German can fold a whole relative clause in front of the noun, or hang a participle phrase off the sentence with a comma. How to build both from the participles, how to read them, and the trap in the free version.