PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
German Pronouns and Prepositions
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
German Pronouns and Prepositions
Second EditionEd Swick Copyright 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-07-175384-5 MHID: 0-07-175384-2 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-175383-8, MHID: 0-07-175383-4. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark.
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Contents
Introduction
Pronouns and prepositions are often undervalued and considered insignificant aspects of language study.
They are even sometimes entirely overlooked. But pronouns and prepositionswhether English or Germanplay an important role in language. In fact, many people study German for years and become masters of conjugations and declensions but continue to have only a basic grasp of the many uses of pronouns and prepositions. This book will help to overcome this neglectful attitude. It puts pronouns and prepositions under a bright light to illuminate their importance in language learning and to provide you with new insight into their mechanics. You will find detailed explanations of their functions and numerous examples to add clarity to those functions.
You will also find an abundance of exercises for practicing the new concepts you learn. The exercises appear in different formats in order to give you practice with pronouns and prepositions from different angles. Some of the exercises ask you to select the word that completes a sentence correctly. Others ask you to complete a sentence with any appropriate word or phrase of your choosing. Still others ask you to write an original sentence that includes a specific phrase. There is an Answer Key at the back of the book so that you can track your progress.
Knowing how to identify pronouns and prepositions is only part of the story. Knowing how they function is also necessary. Knowing where and when pronouns and prepositions are used is another key to unlocking their secrets. It is important to have the whole story, because pronouns and prepositions are more than just little words that adorn sentences. They help to make sentences flow and to sound interesting and meaningful. This book will guide you through the whole story.
Take advantage of the contents of this book and increase your ability to use pronouns and prepositions effectively and accurately. This is an opportunity to bring your German skills to a higher level.
PART I
PRONOUNS
You already know that
pronouns replace nouns in a sentence, and you are certainly familiar with the personal pronouns in German:
ich,
du,
er,
sie,
es,
wir,
ihr, and
Sie. But the story about pronouns continues beyond the personal pronouns. For one thing, the variety of pronouns in German is rather large. They range from personal pronouns, which everyone identifies with ease, to possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, relative pronouns, reflexive pronouns, reciprocal pronouns, and others.
These types of pronouns may be unfamiliar to you now, but once you have experience with these pronouns and adequate practice, they will make sense to you, and you will gain the skill to use pronouns more effectively. In this section of the book, you will be introduced to the various types of German pronouns. They will be described for you, and they will be illustrated with examples. Then you will have the opportunity to practice with them in a variety of exercises. As a result, you will have developed a better understanding of these pronouns and will have increased your effectiveness in using them.
Unit 1
Pronouns in the Nominative Case
The English personal pronouns used as the subject of a sentence are equivalent to the German nominative case pronouns, which are used as the subject of a German sentence.
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