Jenny Russ - Essential German Grammar: Teach Yourself

I didnt have a clue about the language when I started to learn German at school, aged 12, but was blessed with an inspiring teacher who introduced me to the grammar in bite-size pieces and soon infected me with his enthusiasm. I found I could understand each new detail and discovered how satisfying it was to learn the rules, apply them and produce accurate German.

I then studied German at university, which involved spending a semester at Kiel University on the Baltic coast. There I met a fellow student of the German language, four years later we were married and we have shared a passion for German ever since. I trained as a language teacher and spent more than 30 years teaching the German language, literature and culture at every level and to every age group. Perhaps my biggest challenge was teaching my two sons A-level German, but the older one is now a German teacher himself and is married to a German teacher! I also wrote a book on German customs and festivals and became an examiner of both written and oral German for several UK examination boards.

I still love the German language and try to listen to it daily on satellite TV and visit the country two or three times every year, armed with a notebook to record new vocabulary.

I should like to record my grateful thanks to Ginny Catmur for being such a patient and pleasant editor, always available with immediate answers to my queries. I also want to thank my two sons, Jamie and Thomas, and my daughter-in-law, Kate, for their very helpful suggestions, and Thomas for his photograph. I owe the biggest debt to my husband, Charles, for his constant support, plying me with good food and good examples in equal measure.

Finally, I dedicate this book to the memory of my late mother, who used to battle with German grammar.

Jenny Russ

More than 90 million people speak German as their mother tongue and another 20 million are thought to have learned it, or to be learning it, as a second language. It is a very satisfying language to learn as it obeys its own rules, which can easily be learned and applied.

At first sight there are several similarities between English and German vocabulary, for example die Mutter (the mother), der Vater (the father), die Hand (the hand), der Finger (the finger). This is because German is a sister language to English, as well as to Dutch, the Scandinavian languages and the now defunct Gothic. All these languages descend from a common Germanic parent language, known by linguists as Proto-Germanic.

But in contrast to English, German has more variations in its grammatical forms. German has three genders (der, die, das), whereas English has none. (The English definite article the covers everything.) German also has four cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive. (English has only remnants of a case system in words such as who/whom, he/him, she/her.) All nouns start with capital letters in German, and the rules for word order are much stricter in German than in English. German also uses two signs that are unfamiliar to English speakers: the (Eszett), which is pronounced as a voiceless s as in English six or so; and the umlaut sign (), which is sometimes found above the vowels a, o and u and changes their pronunciation.

Please dont worry: our study of German grammar will never be pure theory! It is taught in context as the key to unlocking the living language, to enable us to communicate with business partners, to make new friends and, of course, to enjoy exploring beautiful Germany, Austria and Switzerland.