Talk:German adjectives

Questions about comparisons
"English equivalents such as 'large', 'larger' and 'largest'. 'Very loud' is said as sehr laut; as in English but unlike Italian and Latin, no ending exists to express this absolute superlative form as a single word." I don't think this is correct, what about 'am -sten', eg: 'am lautesten' (the loudest)?

Edit: just noticed "as a single word", I'm a dumbass — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.241.186.195 (talk) 05:24, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Questions "agree" wording
To correctly agree German adjectives, the case, number and gender of the nominal phrase must be considered along with the article of the noun.

Sounds very awkward (Especially "to correctly agree"). I can't think of a good alternative right now.

134.226.1.234 17:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Golly, the correct verb is "to decline":
 * To correctly decline German adjectives...
 * "decline" is the verb that goes with "declension".
 * Also, where have you been living? In English, the verb "to agree" is an intransitive verb, which means that it NEVER takes a direct object.

98.81.0.222 (talk) 18:21, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

viel- is just an adjective and doesn't have definite article declination
I didn't want to just march in and change it, but this is wrong with regard to "viel-":

After manch- (some), solch- (such), viel- (much; many), welch- (which), which have definite article declination.

i.e. "Ich habe viele neue Bücher gekauft", not "viele neuen"

206.126.254.94 22:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You're right. I'll change it. &mdash; Sebastian 22:57, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

"All-" in fact has has weak (i.e. definite article) inflection
Again, I don't want to go in and mess about with this, but there are still some errors:

"All-" actually has weak (i.e. definite article) inflection, as in "alle guten Dinge" (c.f. wrong "alle gute Dinge" and correct "viele gute Dinge")

This is the text as it stands:

> == Strong inflection ==

Strong inflection is used:

o ...

o ...

o After wenig- (few), viel- (much; many), mehrer- (several; many), all- (all), which also have strong adjective inflection.

The italicised bit seems a bit superfluous...!

Just thought I'd check with others before fiddling about with the article text. I may not be 100% correct with this due to some potential ambiguity with mixed and weak inflection in this regard. Thanks! Frog escalator 14:56, 12 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Definitely, I removed that bit. --Saippuakauppias ⇄ 23:55, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Very Misleading!
"Like articles, adjectives use the same plural endings for all three genders. ein lauter Krach ("a loud noise") der laute Krach ("the loud noise")  der große, schöne Mond ("the big, beautiful moon") der lustige Mann ("the funny man")

You have made a statement in the first sentence, and then (after a close look), you have followed this with four examples that do not have anything to do with the topic sentence of the paragraph. "Like articles, adjectives use the same plural endings for all three genders."

You need examples of what the sentence is all about, such as this one: "Die rote Ferraris sind sehr schnell."

{{subst:Unsigned|


 * You got a point: The introductory paragraph needs improvement, --Saippuakauppias ⇄ 23:54, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

German_adjectives#Weak_and_strong_inflection
In the Strong inflection section it says:

"Strong inflection is used:... ...When a quantity is indicated by... ...a number (greater than one, i.e. with no endings)"

but in the No inflection section it says:

"Several quantifying words are not inflected:... ...numbers greater than one"

Either these two statements contradict each other or I've misunderstood (not uncommon). I'm thinking of the play "Der Diener zweier Herren" (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Diener_zweier_Herren ) which suggests to me that bullet point in the No inflection section is wrong.

Cheers, Chris

Case order
Somebody put the cases in order 1-4-3-2 which make these lists completely unusable. They are numbered that way for a reason and listed that way in every grammatical text I have seen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Illustir (talk • contribs) 20:03, 31 January 2014 (UTC)


 * NAGD or occasionally NADG are standard in the English-language textbooks I was taught from here in the UK. I think, given the choice between traditional German numbered order and that standard to English-language textbooks, the latter is to be preferred, since the main audience for this article is naturally schoolchildren and language learners speaking English. I do plan to research the current situation at some point by looking at common modern textbooks in the UK, US and Canada (rather than the old ones I learned from) and report back here. Blythwood (talk) 00:05, 21 April 2014 (UTC)


 * But this isn't even 1-4-2-3 but 1-4-3-2 which seems odd then. Two points: the fact that there is a German numbered order and this is about learning German may be an argument in favor of adhering to the order that is used a lot here on the continent. Judging from the sidebar this article only exists in English and Russian which makes it the go to for a lot of people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.19.209.106 (talk • contribs) 15:49, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Latin_declension uses NAGD. --62.98.99.144 (talk) 05:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * This is truly insane. I thought 1-4-2-3 was already beyond the pale.
 * I don't think the English way of learning languages has any merit (provably so) to justify imposing it on everybody else. We are on the English language pages here because that is for better or worse the common language, the audience is much wider than English speaking learners. Illustir (talk) 13:04, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Strong, weak and mixed Declension
-91.16.49.82 (talk) 21:29&01:16, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * "Weak inflection is used after [...] manch-": zeno.org has ~40 results for "mancher gute", but also 10 results for "mancher guter", including "mancher guter Vers" from the German grammarian Gottsched. So en.wp's statement seems to be doubtful.
 * "Weak inflection is used after [...] alle (all), beide (both)": alle and beide are usually used in plural, where one can't differ between mixed and weak. alle has a singular as in "aller Welt", but can anyone give a real example with an adjective after it?
 * "Strong inflection is used: [...] einig- (some)": zeno.org has 3 results for "(ein) einiges kleines", and 2 for "einiges kleine". So en.wp's statement seems to be doubtful.
 * "Strong inflection is used: [...] etwas": that should only be the case when it is just "etwas", not when it is "ein" and "etwas" es "in einem etwas neuen Gewande" or "zu einem etwas entfernten Bauern"
 * "Weak inflection is used after: [...] jeglich- (any), jed- (every)": in case of "ein jeder" etc. it might be different like with etwas.

Consistency with page on German articles
The page German articles has columns ordered as "Masculine," "Neuter," "Feminine," and "Plural." Is it OK if I make an edit to make the ordering between that page and this one consistent? If yes, where should the edit be, here or there?


 * Change them there; I've personally never seen a textbook/resource that lists them in that order. Always "Der/Die/Das". --Hardwigg (talk) 15:56, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Table with endings
This new table with the endings devoid of their examples is not very useful at all; the tables further down which show the endings in place with an example (ein, eine, einer, einem) was just fine as it is. This adds nothing at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.139.124.132 (talk) 19:29, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Row order and gender-number order in first table
I like the conciseness of the tabulation of article and adjective endings in the first table a lot!

Since a) the absence or presence of an article codetermines the endings (logical reason) and b) the endings of the articles and possessive determiners in rows 4 and 5 more closely resemble the strong inflection endings in row 1 (practical reason), I propose to change the order of the rows to 0-4-5-1-2-3 where the numbers refer to the current row numbers. (Row number 0 refers to the column titles row.) I think that would ease the task of the reader in noticing the resemblances, and of a learner who would use the table to memorize the endings.

To further reduce their burden, I would propose to give the endings in the order masculine singular-neuter singular-feminine singular-plural. That either puts like endings closer to each other (for some table entries) or does not change them at all (for other entries). (It may not be a coincidence that the set of masculine singular endings more resembles the set of neuter singular endings than it resembles the feminine singular endings, but I leave that for someone knowledgeable to comment on.)

The result would be:

This table lists the various endings, in order masculine, neuter, feminine, plural, for the different inflection cases. For example, "X X e e" denotes "ein, ein, eine, eine"; and "m m r n" denotes "gutem, gutem, guter, guten".

I have read some of the comments on the order of the grammatical cases. I do not object to changing from a certain traditional order to an order that more closely reflects the origination of the cases, helps increase insight to learners, or helps them acquaint themselves with any similarities that may exist, or several or all of the above. The same holds for the orders of the genders and number: it appears that masculine and neuter endings much more resemble each other than either of them does the feminine endings.Redav (talk) 13:19, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Mixed inflection examples
The current example for plural mixed inflections is "sie sind gute Menschen". Would it be better to change the example to "sie sind keine guten Menschen"? Scottmsg (talk) 21:29, 30 June 2022 (UTC)


 * I definitely think the example should be changed. I'm just starting in German, and it really confused me, as I assumed all the adjectives in the sentence would have the mixed inflection TheChilliPL (talk) 09:38, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Changing the null morpheme symbol from X to Ø?
In a lot of sources the Ø symbol is used to present the null morpheme. It could be used here as well, especially in the tables. For example, instead of  (indefinite article nominative endings), it could be   TheChilliPL (talk) 11:00, 7 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I would change it. I think it would make the endings much clearer. 32.132.2.162 (talk) 21:38, 9 September 2022 (UTC)


 * If it's going to be changed, it should be ∅ (the empty set symbol), not Ø (a letter used in some Nordic languages). --Zundark (talk) 06:52, 10 September 2022 (UTC)