Talk:German declension

message: I'd be happy to read about when the nouns get any suffixes (like -s in genitive and -n in plural dative). After all, these belong to the declension, too. (The various forms of the plural need not be treated here, at least not necessarily in the first turn.) Adam78 00:53, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nouns 

message: 1) I didn't like the description of German as a "conservative langauge" and providing this opinion as justification for the existence of a case system. I would rather a description of what the system actually does rather than whether we think that the system is either 'progressive' or 'conservative'. I have provided a few sentences that flesh out the idea of a case system instead of just quickly introducing the paradigm which would be confusing to a speaker of an uninflected language. 
2) The first sentence seemed redundant to me: "German Declensions are the system of Declension in the German language." The term under definition is being defined by its own term. I have reached out to a few more ideas to provide a beginning definition. : sable_de_nuit 17:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  2 things 

message: "mir - to/for me" - this is confusing. "To me" is Dative, but "for me" is really Accusative
--68.7.73.9 (talk) 11:20, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "to/for" in Dative? 

message: There is a "possessive pronoun" entry in the "Pronouns" section of this article. However, the (very short) text in it actually refers to possessive adjectives or determiners: mein, dein,.../my, your,... Possessive pronouns are supposed to be something else (mine, yours, ...) and they might need an entry here. However, I am a native speaker of neither german nor english, so this post is just to attract the attention of someone knowledgeable on the matter, who'd be kind enough to perform an appropriate edit. I'd think either delete the entry altogether (possessive adjectives are already treated elsewhere, and anyway wouldn't belong in the "pronouns" section), or replace the text by what the declension of actual possessive pronouns is. Racaillou (talk) 12:55, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possessive pronouns 

message: In my language class, teacher teach: Masculine-Neuter-Feminine-Plural format and it is also helpful to memorize things in this way. Can I change this in all table? Godhulii 1985 (talk) 11:34, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Traditional Latin & German order of genders is "masc. - fem. - neut. - plur." and order of cases is "nom. - gen. - dat. - acc. (- voc. - abl.)". As the cases are ordered in another way, then it should be ok to reorder genders. -14:54, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  M-F-N-P or M-N-F-P? 

message: At least in Germany, the traditional order is Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative (which were formerly also called 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th case). Has this changed in recent years? Is the English tradition of teaching German different? This would make the old (numbered) case names confusing... -- megA (talk) 18:24, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Traditional Latin & German order of cases is "nom. - gen. - dat. - acc. (- voc. - abl.)". Modern linguists (Germ.: Linguisten =/= Sprachwissenschaftler) order cases like "nom. (- voc.) - acc. - gen. - dat. (- abl.)". In recent years both ways of ordering the cases are in use. The ordering "nom. - acc. - gen. - dat." is also used in German (Langenscheidt Kurzgrammatik Deutsch, though the book's content is retarded and was most likely written by an English speaker). -14:54, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Case order 

message: In the first paragraph it says "A transliteration of the same sentence from German to English would appear rather different (ex. John-subject sees Mary-directobject) and can be expressed with a variety of word order (ex. Mary-directobject sees John-subject) with little or no change in meaning." but given that this sentence has no articles or adjectives, that's not really true. Wouldn't be a better example be "John eats an apple?" (such that "Einen Apfel isst John" is an acceptable word order). At any rate "word order" should probably have an 's'...  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wizofaus (talk • contribs) 03:35, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questionable assertion 

message: "In English, a simple sentence must be written in strict word order (ex. John sees Mary). A transliteration of the same sentence from German to English would appear rather different (ex. John-subject sees Mary-directobject) and can be expressed with a variety of word order (ex. Mary-directobject sees John-subject) with little or no change in meaning."
Actually, no. "John sieht Mary" only means "John sees Mary", since names don't have declension endings for Accusative (in modern German). The example sentence only works with nouns, articles, or adjectives that have different declension endings for Nominative and Accusative cases. A workaround would be: "Der John sieht die Mary" (subject-object) vs. "Den John sieht die Mary" (object-subject), but articles are usually only used with names in southern dialects. An example sentence should use distinct endings for different cases, otherwise the meaning would not be definite and normal word order (as in English) would be assumed: John sieht Maria != Maria sieht John. -- megA (talk) 23:04, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction: "John sees Mary" works the same way in German... 

message: Exactly how does declension mark the difference between subject and object in German in this example? The German would give Johann sieht Maria <---> "Maria" sieht Johann. There is no declension happening here at all. The only way you'd know the difference is in stress in the speaker's voice - John sees Mary. MARY, sees John (not Stacey). Just as in English. It's with weak masculine nouns with articles and adjectives that "declension" becomes a lot clearer. Eg "DeR lange Name ist schwierig auszusagen." "Ja, ich kenne deN langeN NameN auch. Die Buchstabierung deS langeN NameNS weiss ich nicht"  etc. You don't seen this kind of declension in names usually. Except maybe cases like "Das ist Marx. Marxens Geburtstag liegt in Oktober." Or maybe in Latinates. Christus ist der Herr. Sie sind jetzt mit Christo. Christi Geburtstag heisst Christmas im Englischen. So the writer needs to explain exactly what s/he is referring to - declension of names or of articles (which is technically inflection, not declension). 122.151.160.219 (talk) 13:18, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  John sees Mary/Mary sees John 

message: I tried to fix the example sentence for one that actually uses articles (which are declined) to mark the subject/object distinction irrespective of word order. I am not a native German speaker so if it's incorrect please change it back to the less-wrong example (or better, let's find an example that actually *does* show the variable word order in German). 108.7.201.112 (talk) 11:30, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  John ignores Mary, eats Apple instead 

message: The section on declination of attributive adjectives says that the strong declination is used when there is no preceding article, or when "the preceding article does not fully indicate the case, gender, and number of the noun". It's not at all clear to me what that actually requires.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.112.55.5 (talk) 13:49, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  What counts as "fully indicat[ing] the case, gender, and number of the noun"? 

message: On the German language page of this article nouns are divided into 4 groups and 13 subgroups:
 
    
      
      
      S1m, n
      S2m, n
      S3f
      S4m, n
      S5m, n
      S6f
      S7m, n
      W1m, n
      W2f
      M1m, n
      M2m, n
      F1m, n
      F2f
    
    
      Singular
      NomAcc
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
    
    
      Dat
      (e)
      (e)
      
      (e)
      
      
      
      (e)n
      
      (e)
      (e, en)
      
      
    
    
      Gen
      (e)s
      (e)s
      
      (e)s
      s
      
      s
      (e)n
      
      (e)s
      (e)ns
      s
      
    
  
    
      Plural
      NomAccGen
      ¨er
      ¨e
      ¨e
      e
      ¨
      ¨
      
      (e)n
      (e)n
      (e)n
      (e)n
      s
      s
    
    
      Dat
      ¨ern
      ¨en
      ¨en
      en
      ¨n
      ¨n
      n
      (e)n
      (e)n
      (e)n
      (e)n
      s
      s
    
Artur Severi Bilov (talk) 12:51, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Noun conjugation