Declination of Adjectives, or: Sharon's Notes, Adjectival things pt 1

I am preparing for a German exam.  You have been warned.

Okay, a lot of the stuff to do with adjectives in German hangs off the case declension thing.  That's going to be the topic of another post, so I'm just going to take it as read, for now, that cases exist and they make words do stuff.

Now, adjectives can be found hanging around in a sentence in one of two places:  after a verb like "is", "seems" or "remains", or in front of a noun.

Let's get that first one out of the way, shall we?  In a sentence like "the apple looks fresh", "the climate is torrid" or "my giddy aunt remains giddy", there isn't actually much happening.  Something is simply existing in a certain state, and the adjective is telling us what that state is.

The verb, in this case, is what we call a copula - it's actually joining the noun with whatever state of existence the noun happens to be in.  And the adjectives are what we call "predicative adjectives" - in that they form the predicate of the verb (a predicate is what you get when your verb doesn't have an object, but still needs to include a concept beyond the verb in order to make sense).

In German, predicative adjectives are free to loll about in their natural state, not taking on any particular ending at all:  "Das Auto ist rot", "Die Frauen scheinen wütend", "Der Mann bleibt dumm".

So, yeah.  That's it.  Predicative adjectives are covered.  Good.  Now onto the attributive adjectives.

Attributive adjectives are the ones that hang around in front of a noun and become part of the noun group.  The noun itself is modified by the adjective.  It's not just "the car" it's "the red car".

Attributive adjectives change their endings depending on:

• The case of the noun group
• The gender of the noun
• The presence of a definite or indefinite article in the noun group

And, while all of these things are highly important, but it's the thing about the article that tends to govern the way we think about German adjectives.

If the noun group has a definite article (die, der, das, etc) or any of the words that are treated the same way as definite articles (the "der words": dieser, jener, derselbe, welcher, jeder and alle [and all their sisters]), then this happens:

Nominative case (singular):  All adjectives, regardless of gender, will end in an -e. 
Accusative case (singular):  Masculine adjectives end with an -en, the others with an -e.
Dative and Genitive cases (singular):  Everything ends with an -en.
Plural nouns: Everything ends with an -en.

Lovely.  It makes no sense at all, but that's life in a German sentence.  At least it's reasonably clear.

If the noun group has an indefinite article (ein or eine, etc) or one of the "ein words" (mein, dein, sein, ihr, unser, euer and kein, etc), then this happens:

Nominative case:  The adjective kind of takes on the same(ish) endings as a definite article - M = -er, N = -es and F = -e. Plurals start forging separate identities, so the nominative plural ends in -e.
Accusative case:  As above, the definite article endings leach over into the adverbs - M = -en, N = -es, F = -e. Pl = -e.
Dative and Genitive cases:  Everything still ends with an -en.*

Mmmhmm.  Okay.  There is a pattern here, but it's a bit hard to see at present.

Things get slightly more sensible when you have an adjective in a noun group with no article.  In this case the adjectives really do replace the articles, so they are adopting more or less the same endings as der words:

Nominative case:  M -er, N -es, F -e, Pl -e.
Accusative case:  M -en, N -es, F -e, Pl -e.
Dative case: M -em, N -em, F -e, Pl -e.
Genitive case: M -en, N -en, F -er, Pl -er.

Basically, what happens is that, in the absence of a definite article, the adjectives take the definite articles' endings for themselves, to try to indicate the case and gender of the noun.

The patterns are really clear and obvious for Nominative and Accusative cases.  Dative and Genitive seem to be bumming around a bit.  This is because the indefinite article is still doing some heavy lifting for Dative and Genitive noun groups.  You'll notice they pull up their socks and start doing something useful when there are no articles at all.

Mind you, Genitive adjectives still seems to be a bit distracted - they haven't gotten around to remembering that Genitive case usually has an -es on the end of its articles...

So, all you have to do is keep track of the case and gender of your nouns, and the adjectives sort themselves out - but let the articles boss them around.

And remember, kids, adjectives stack.  When you have a series of adjectives sitting between the same article/noun combo, they all take the same endings:

"Das alte, verrostete, rote Auto ist noch gut..."



*In one of my textbooks, there is an indication that Genitive adjectives following indefinite articles en in -er.  I haven't seen this anywhere else, but it has left me feeling doubtful.