The 7 most important German grammar rules

Right now: you have the words, so why won’t the sentence come?

ShortcutThe verb goes in 2nd place, a second verb goes last, the article changes with its job, a noun gets kein, everything else gets nicht. Once these seven are in place you can build sentences — the rest is vocabulary.

You know hundreds of words, yet you get stuck when you try to build a sentence. The cause is not missing vocabulary. In English, word order tells you who does what: “the man sees the dog” is not “the dog sees the man”. German hands that job to the article and to fixed verb positions. Put a correct word in the wrong place and the sentence falls apart.

The seven rules on this page were picked by one test: can you build a single correct sentence without knowing this? Structure, not vocabulary. All seven are short enough to sink in within the first two weeks.

This page is a map. Each rule is explained briefly and, at the end of its section, linked to its full topic. Click the link for the rule you get stuck on and study the details there.

The table: 7 rules that build sentences

The whole page is in this table. Save it; when you get stuck building a sentence, come back here first. In the right-hand column, the bold part is the job that rule does in the sentence.

The seven rules fall into three families: 1–3 verb position, 4–5 nouns and articles, 6–7 verb endings and negation. Each family has its own section below. In a single sentence, all three work at once:

Rules 1 and 2: the verb has two places

A German sentence gives the verb two places. The conjugated verb, the one that changes with the person, always stands in 2nd place. If there is a second verb in the sentence, it goes last. Whatever you put at the start, these two places do not change.

Rule 1. Put anything other than the subject first — a time, a place, a question word — and the subject moves behind the verb. Question words work the same way: Wo wohnst du? The verb is still in 2nd place.

Rule 2. The second verb comes in three disguises, and in all three it goes last: modal + infinitive (kann … kommen), Perfekt + participle (habe … gearbeitet), separable prefix (aufstehen → stehe … auf). Whatever slips in between stays in the middle: Ich kann heute leider nicht kommen.

Rule 3: weil and dass push the verb to the end

A conjunction like weil · dass · wenn opens a subordinate clause, and in it the conjugated verb drops to the end too. Rule 1 stops here: a subordinate clause has no 2nd place, the verb is last.

This is where English speakers trip most. In English the order never changes: “because I am sick” looks just like “I am sick”. German rearranges the clause: because I sick am. It feels wrong at first, but it works the same way every time.

There is also a “because” that does not throw the verb to the end: denn. Ich komme nicht, denn ich bin krank. The order stays normal, but in speech you hear weil far more often. The difference between the two is on the subordinate-clause page.

Rules 4 and 5: the article does the job of endings

Rule 4. Every German noun has an article — der, die or das — and the noun is written with a capital letter, even in the middle of a sentence: Ich lese das Buch. The article is usually not something you can work out by logic; you learn it together with the word. In your notebook, write the word with its article and its plural:

• der Tisch, die Tische — table
• die Tür, die Türen — door
• das Buch, die Bücher — book

A small help: some endings give the article away. -ung · -heit · -keit → die, -chen → das. The full list is on the article page.

Rule 5. In English only pronouns change form to show a role: he sees him, I → me, they → them. German does the same thing to the article, and to every noun: der Mann → den Mann → dem Mann. The noun itself usually stays put; the article shows the job.

Rules 6 and 7: person endings, kein and nicht

Rule 6. The verb takes an ending for each person. English has only one left (he comes); German still uses almost all of them. Find the stem (kommen → komm-) and add the ending for the person.

The only exception you will meet in week one: sein and haben are irregular. ich bin · du bist · er ist — ich habe · du hast · er hat. Both are so common that you memorise them separately.

Rule 7. For negation there is one question: is a noun being negated? A noun with no article or with ein takes kein — “no …, not any”. A verb, an adjective or a noun with a definite article takes nicht — “not”.

What nobody tells you: German is less strange than it looks

What makes German look hard is supposed to be the “odd” verb positions. In truth only one thing is odd for an English speaker: 2nd place. The rest is one simple shape: the main verb very often sits at the end, and only the conjugated part hops forward to 2nd place.

In practice, build it like this: first line the sentence up with the verbs at the end — ich heute nicht kommen kann. Then take the conjugated part (kann) and move it to 2nd place: Ich kann heute nicht kommen. The nice part: the order you lined up first is exactly the subordinate clause — …, weil ich heute nicht kommen kann.

Three traps that give you away

A German speaker’s ear catches these three within the first second. All three are habits carried over from English, and each is fixed by one of the rules above.

When the three fixes meet in one sentence, it looks like this:

Test yourself: six sentences, seven rules

Six English sentences, each testing one rule. Build them aloud first, then check the answers below. The number on the right tells you which rule is being tested.

• 1 · I’m staying home today. — rule 1
• 2 · I can’t come tomorrow. — rule 2
• 3 · I’m not coming because I’m sick. — rule 3
• 4 · I have a dog. — rule 5
• 5 · Where do you live? — rule 6
• 6 · I have no time. — rule 7

6/6 → the skeleton is in place, go and load up on vocabulary. 3–5 → go back to the section for the rule you missed and open the linked page. 0–2 → save the table above and study one rule a day; in seven days you have all seven.

• Heute trinke ich Kaffee. I’m drinking coffee today. rule 1 · verb in 2nd place
• Ich kann heute nicht kommen. I can’t come today. rule 2 · second verb last
• …, weil ich krank bin. …, because I’m sick. rule 3 · verb last in a subordinate clause
• der Tisch · die Tür · das Buch table · door · book rule 4 · article + capital letter
• Ich sehe den Mann. I see the man. rule 5 · him → den · to him → dem
• ich komme · du kommst I come · you come rule 6 · person endings, the pronoun stays
• Ich habe keine Zeit. I have no time. rule 7 · kein for nouns, nicht for the rest

The whole thing in one sentence: the conjugated verb goes to 2nd place, the rest of the verb goes last — everything else is articles and endings.