Hello everybody, it's Laura from MosaLingua. Welcome to our series
of language hacks for German grammar. We've done our best
to simplify German grammar because we know that many people
think that German is a difficult language. Often, people say that life's
too short to learn German, but they say that because they don't have us
by their side: MosaLingua and our tips and tricks
for German grammar.
With our hacks you'll learn German grammar faster and it won't
take you a lifetime, we promise. Some parts of
German grammar are even easier than in other languages. That's why the
first part of our series is about showing you what you don't have to learn.
Relax and don't believe anybody who says that German
is difficult to learn. First of all: there are no conjugation
groups, which makes conjugating verbs much easier than in
other languages. All verbs have the same endings and are almost always
conjugated in the same way. You don't have to remember 3 different groups, and that
saves time and energy. Secondly: all verbs have the same ending
in the infinitive, and there are almost no real irregular verbs.
Most verbs can be categorized in groups because they generally follow a certain pattern.
This way you don't have to learn all of them. You just have to know
which group they belong to, and then you can conjugate them. There are very few
real irregular verbs left over. Third:
in German there aren't as many tenses as in most other language.
For example, there is no tense for actions that are happening now, and
there also aren't as many forms that describe something impossible
improbable, or uncertain. That minimizes the number of tenses
that you have to learn and also makes it much easier to figure out which verb form
to use for which tense. In spoken German we use even fewer tenses.
Some tenses are only used in literature, so
you don't need to know them in the beginning. You only actually have to study one present tense
and one past tense. We almost always use the present tense to talk about
the future. So if you know just two tenses
you will be able to express and understand about 80% of what you need to. Fourth:
there are similarities between German and other European languages.
When you hear words like "die Butter," "das Bier" or other words like those,
you see its resemblance to English. But there are also
a lot of words with Latin roots that look like words in
Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese, for example
"die Generation," "die Alternative," or "die Kapazität." Fifth: some people get
scared when they see long German words, but that's not necessary.
Actually we just connect words you already know, getting rid of the space between them.
This way you don't have to think much about the syntax. A long word
can be composed of three or more words.
For example: in English I would say "the key to the door of the room." In German that's
simply "Zimmertürschlüssel," which literally means "roomdoorkey."
You simply need to read the separate parts of the word in order to understand
what it means. Maybe one day you can even invent your
own long German words! I hope I was able to show you that
not everything about German grammar is super complicated. If you need more
info, take a look at the description below the video.
Our method focuses on basic grammar,
exactly what you need to start
speaking German as soon as possible. Have fun studying and see you soon!