Conversation Starters in German

Key Takeaways

•All nouns have gender in German and the gender determines the article to

be used before a noun. Masculine nouns take the der article, feminine takes the die article and neuter nouns take the das article.

•All nouns in German start with a capital letter.

•There are no silent letters in German. All the letters in a word have a sound

and must be pronounced.

•The letter W in German sounds like V.

•The letter V in German sounds like F.

•The letter ß never appears at the beginning of a word, therefore, if you

come across any word with that letter at the beginning it will be wrong.

•All nouns, pronouns, articles and adjectives in German are declined. This

means that they change their endings depending on their use in a sentence.

•In German, adjectives and articles change their ending depending on the

gender of the nouns they modify.

•In German, you have to memorize the plurals of nouns just like with the

gender. There are no definite rules for that. You can, however, easily recog- nize a plural noun by looking at the article that precedes it. Herzliche Glückwünsche! Congratulations! You’ve come to the end of this book. Enjoy speaking German!