Das ist kein Apfel, sondern eine Birne. — That's not an apple, but a pear. 🍐 "Sondern" is one of those small German words that trips learners up because English only has one word, "but," for two different jobs. In this lesson, we break down exactly when to use sondern instead of aber, with the rul...

The Genitiv: not so important? Falsch! The Genitiv is not going anywhere, and if you want to understand, read, write and speak proper German, you need it. In this B1 lesson you learn what the Genitiv does, how to build it, the genitive articles, when to add -s or -es, and how Germans really talk i...

seit zwei Jahren, seit ich in Berlin wohne, seitdem: three words, three different jobs. Seit and seitdem look similar, but they are different types of words. In this lesson you learn the three jobs: seit as a preposition, seit (or seitdem) as a conjunction, and seitdem as an adverb. Plus a simple ...

Während ich das Abendessen koche, höre ich oft Podcasts. The word während can be a conjunction and a preposition, and both mean "while" or "during". But the grammar is completely different. In this lesson you learn how to tell them apart, which case you need and which version is right in an exam.

Entweder du isst jetzt dein Essen oder du gehst sofort ins Bett! Life is full of choices, and entweder ... oder is how you express them in German. In this B1 lesson you learn how this two-part conjunction works with the same verb or with two verbs, when you can leave out the subject, and what chan...

German has a special way to talk about things that aren't real — wishes, hypotheticals, "if I could fly..." situations — and it all comes down to one small word plus one important verb form: wenn + Konjunktiv 2. In this lesson we'll quickly review Konjunktiv 2 and then focus on exactly how to comb...

Not every relative clause waits patiently at the end of the sentence — sometimes it interrupts, sitting right in the middle of your main clause, and that's what German calls an eingeschobene Relativsatz (embedded relative clause). After a quick review of how relative clauses work in general, this ...

Most textbooks teach you adjective endings after definite and indefinite articles — but leave you guessing what happens after mein, dein, sein or kein, and that gap trips up a lot of B1 learners. The good news: possessive articles (mein, dein, sein, unser, euer, ihr) and the negative article (kein...

Telling someone what happened before, during, or after something else is one of the most useful things you can do in a German conversation — and three small conjunctions, bevor, während, and nachdem, do exactly that. Here's how each one works, plus one bonus meaning of während that catches a lot o...

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...