German texts are full of abbreviations (AbkĂĽrzungen) such as z. B., d. h., bzw. and usw. This lesson explains the top ten abbreviations in written German: what they stand for, what they mean and when you can use them, each with example sentences. At the end you get three small writing tips about c...
Do you know the difference between nie and niemals, or between jemand and niemand? In this lesson you learn eight German indefinite words in four useful pairs: alles and nichts, jemals and nie, ĂĽberall and nirgends, jemand and niemand. They are opposites, which makes them easy to remember.
1. alle...
From A1 to B1 the official Goethe vocabulary list contains 690 verbs, and almost 25% of them are separable verbs (trennbare Verben). This lesson gives you the 50 most important and most commonly used ones, grouped by prefix, with a meaning and an example sentence for each. A bonus section adds sep...
Want to say what something is for or what you are trying to achieve? German gives you three options: damit, um ... zu and zum + Infinitiv. Once you know when to use which one — and what rules each of them follows — you can go far beyond "weil" and express purposes and goals the way native speakers...
German relative clauses can be tough — but "was" and "wo" are the two relative pronouns that let you skip prepositions, cases and articles. In this lesson you will learn when and how to use "was" and "wo" correctly, which rules apply to each, and how they can make your German both simpler and more...
Nachdem looks like a simple word meaning "after," but it comes with a grammar rule that trips up even confident B1 learners: the two clauses it connects can never be in the same tense. Here's exactly why, and how to get the tense pairing right every time.
The Basic Rule: Nachdem Needs Two Differe...
The Plusquamperfekt is the German past perfect tense, and it is easy to build: take a Perfekt sentence and put the auxiliary verb into the Präteritum. Ich habe eine Tasche gekauft becomes Ich hatte eine Tasche gekauft. This lesson shows where the tense sits among the six German tenses, when you ne...
Innerhalb and außerhalb do double duty in German — they can describe where something is and when something happens — and both meanings follow the same genitive-preposition rules. Here's how to use them as place prepositions, as time prepositions, and what to do when the genitive case isn't visible...
English has one word for "like." German has at least three — and they aren't interchangeable. In this lesson you'll learn mögen, gefallen, and gern, exactly when to use each one, and the one subtle but important difference between mögen and gefallen that trips up almost every beginner.
Mögen: Liki...
The official Goethe B1 word list contains 121 irregular verbs, and this lesson gives you the 40 that matter most. For every verb you get the meaning, the present tense form that changes, the Perfekt and the example sentence from the video. Many of these verbs are separable (abnehmen, losfahren), a...
