Web virtuoso Brian Zahn has surpassed these efforts on his outstanding website. Must-see!

1. Verb Endings (from Rob Williams, or rather one of his students)

"Icky, dust and dirt" - ich-e, du-st, (d) er-t.

2. Articles (from Colleen Taber)

Say the "die" words with a higher voice for a while and the "der" words with a lower voice. Yodel the "das" words or do something weird with your voice.

3. Cases (from Margot Barke)

RESE, NESE and MERMAN:

Nominative=RESE (R=der, E=die, S=das, E=die)
Accusative=NESE (N=den, E=die, S=das, E=die)
Dative = MRMN (M=dem, R=der, M=dem, N=den)

4. Two-way prepositions (either/or prepositions) (from Julie Baird) Action verbs = accusative
dead (just lying there, not moving) verbs = dative

5. denn/weil (from Amy Claxon)

"Denn" is your friend. (doesn't change verb order)
"weil" is kind of wild (sends the verb to the end)

6. Modals (from Teri Ash)

Teri calls the regular modals "total" modals; moegen is a "quasimodal" since it doesn't always function as a modal even though it looks like one; and "wissen" is a pseudo-modal.

7. Word order with modals and future (from Doug Philip)

word order with modals = SMOSI (S=subject, M=modal, OS = other stuff, I = infinitive)

word order with future = SWOSI (S=subject, W=form of werden, OS = other stuff, I = infinitive)

8. Word Order (from Nella Spurlin)

To help students remember to keep the verb in second place make a "V" with 2 fingers like a peace sign - "V" for verb and 2 for second.

8. Grammatical Terms

Since I do not like long grammatical terms I have come up with some shorter terms:

"chopped verbs" are separable-prefix verbs
"mutant verbs" are verbs with a vowel change (actually I heard that term first from my colleague, Robert Kisling)
For the verbs with the e>i vowel change I ask my students to remember "dust and dirt in the eye" (=du and er forms change to i).

Rob Williams calls subordinating conjunctions "verb kickers" since they kick the verb to the end. (He said this is an idea from Concordia College.)

Sabine Lewis Stillwater, OK

For sep. prefix verbs I bring in Oreo cookies and give each student one . As a group I ask them what is the only "proper" way to eat an Oreo cookie...MOST say take it apart first and eat the middle. so...an Oreo cookie must be separated before eating and a sep. pref. verb must be sep. before using. Seems to help them remember...they refer to them as "Oreo verbs":}

sogletre@pen.k12.va.us

My students have no trouble remembering 2-way prepositions this way:

MA Massachusetts (movement, accusative)
PD Police Department (position, dative)

Someone also came up with this for the verb endings:

est ten ten ( e, st, t, en, t, en)

We refer to the weak verb endings chart as the "Oklahoma Chart" because one of my students thought the "e" section resembled that state:

e e e en
en e e en
en en en en
en en en en

bartle@chs.center.k12.mo.us

Return to Germany Page. Last updated May 11, 1998.

Corrections, comments, questions and suggestions are always welcome.