Table of Contents
How do you identify a weak noun in German?
In German, weak nouns are masculine nouns that all have the same inflection except in the nominative singular and sometimes the genitive singular. German has many more weak nouns than English; for example, Bär (pl. Bären) “bear”, Name (pl.
What is a strong declension in German?
Strong declension describes the declension of adjectives that are not preceded by either a definite or indefinite article (e.g. der, die, das, ein, or eine).
What is a strong declension?
strong declension (plural strong declensions) (linguistics) A class of words in many Germanic languages including English, which decline irregularly rather than by suffixation (for example goose, whose plural is geese).
What is a weak declension?
Fourth Declension (“weak”) nouns are nouns whose stems end in a vowel (except for nouns that end in u, which are either third declension or minor declension). You do not need to be concerned about the gender of a fourth declension noun.
What is N declension?
Just to make things more complicated, certain masculine nouns are “weak” and take an “n” ending in all cases except the nominative. For example, most of the words for “boy” in German (Junge, Bursche, Knabe, Bube) fall into this group: Singular. Plural.
What is strong and weak declension?
Strong declensions better (but not flawlessly) indicate the gender/case of the noun because they are the most varied. Weak declensions do not indicate the gender/case of the noun because they have almost no variation (there are just two options: -e or -en).
What is strong and weak declension German?
What is a weak plural?
Weak plurals are where you slenderize, or add an a to form the plural. Strong ones are anything else. See here. Generally. With weak plurals, the genitive singular is the same form as the nominative plural, and the genitive plural is the same as the nominative singular.
What is the difference between strong and weak adjective declension?
The strong forms were associated with the meaning of indefiniteness, the weak forms with the meaning of definiteness. The formal and semantic opposition between the two declensions of adjectives is regarded as a grammatical category of definiteness – indefiniteness.
What are the 3 types of declension in German?
Adjective declension. As we have stated, there are 3 types of declension, depending on the the particle that comes before the adjective: Weak declension (the definite article + adjective). Das schöne Sofa. The beautiful sofa. Mixed declension(indefinite article + adjective).
What is weak declension and strong declension?
Weak declension: Except for the nominative singular, all other cases end with (-e)n. Strong declension: The genitive singular without special ending, the nominative plural ends with -e/-s.
What is a strong declension of a pronoun?
The most common case of strong declension is: (strong declension of adjective without article) + (Noun) There are 3 types of declensions for pronouns: weak, mixed and strong but not all pronouns have the three declensions. Numbers are declined as well.
What is the genitive of weak nouns in German?
So the genitive of those would be des Willens and des Gedankens respectively. And the only non-masculine weak noun also works this way: das Herz (heart) –> des Herzens. The second group is a little fuzzier, but it’s basically nouns with certain Latin and Greek endings.