Guten Morgen Grammar

German grammar and language learning resources for you and for me!

Guten Morgen Grammar: Let’s talk about bzw

Boy howdy, German loves abbreviations. Particularly in emails and official municipal writings, the writing is peppered with odd little fragments like bzw and usw and z.B….omg, it’s like fml, seriously wtf. ANYWAY, enough whimsy. Let’s look at some of the most popular ones, and how to use them properly.   usw Stands for: und so weiter – etcetera This is probably the easiest one to use – just throw it in there wherever you would use etc in English, for example at the end of a list or extended description. Just remember that with usw you don’t put a full-stop/period...

Guten Morgen Grammar: Conjunctions part 2 – Fly away, little verb

  In Part 1 we took a look at co-ordinating conjunctions and what I call ‘mixed conjunctions’. As I mentioned, these conjunctions could also be seen as ‘easy’ and ‘medium’ conjunctions, like difficulty levels in Guitar Hero: for ‘easy’ you play with just three fingers, for ‘medium’ you play with four, and for ‘hard’ you have to play chords with your forehead while solving physics equations that flash up on the screen…or something, I haven’t played that game in a while. Anyway – now it’s time for us to dive into the ‘hard’ conjunctions: subordinating conjunctions. Don’t panic, though. Subordinating...

Guten Morgen Grammar: Hot Dative

Alright guys. Before we do anything else, let’s go over some terminology. Some of you will already know these terms, but I’m not going to start talking about how to make a cake until I’m sure that everyone here knows what a bowl and a whisk are. There are two main elements in any one sentence or clause besides the verb: the subject and the object. The subject is the thing which carries out the action of the verb – the ‘main character’ of the sentence, you might say – while the object is the thing which has the action...

Guten Morgen Grammar: German Adjective Endings and the Magic Saucepan

Guten Morgen Berlin is broadening its horizons, ladies and gents! As well as the usual occasional quaint ramblings about goings on in this fair city, we’ll now also be featuring lessons in German language and grammar on the site for anyone who is looking to improve their German, revise an important topic or simply loves thinking about the intricacies of cases and word order. That third group of people are truly kings among men. My other readers needn’t fear – there will still be plenty of tales of me falling over and showing my knickers in public to keep you...