Are there hard and fast rules for determining with suffix to use in German?
I've never had a German teacher so much of what I learned was self taught, something I never really learned was when to use 'e', 'en', 'es', etc as the endings to different words. For example, when would you use 'ein', 'eines' or 'einen'?
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Answers · 2
2
Yes, there are hard rules. Endings are determined by case, gender and number. The verb determines which object(s) and case(s) to use. There are some rules of thumb to make it easier to remember which case to use, but there are also a lot of exceptions.
See e.g.
http://www.udoklinger.de/Deutsch/Grammatik/DekNomen.htm
http://www.udoklinger.de/Deutsch/Grammatik/Adjektiv.htm
http://www.udoklinger.de/Deutsch/Grammatik/Artikel.htm
http://www.udoklinger.de/Deutsch/Grammatik/UnArtikel.htm
Learn each verb together with objects and cases, e.g. "jemandem (Dat) etwas (Akk) geben". And practise a lot. :-)
1
Yes, there are very hard and very fast rules for all this. This is a matter of gender and case, and requires a certain amount of study.
You can start here:
http://german.about.com/library/blcase_nom.htm
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