General German grammar

declension of german definite articles, der, die, , das ( ).



this sentence example of how cases used in german (and in every other language grammatical case). differs english, word order in sentence has more meaning. in german, because function of each noun not marked position within sentence declined articles—and in case of genitive , dative suffix @ end of noun itself—the german sentence be:




der tisch gab dem tisch(e) den tisch des tisch(e)s.
der tisch gab des tisch(e)s tisch dem tisch(e)
den tisch des tisches gab dem tisch der tisch.
dem tisch(e) gab den tisch des tisch(e)s der tisch.
des tisch(e)s tisch gab dem tisch(e) den tisch.
etc.




although of these may sound exotic in modern-day german, grammatically correct (and rather unusual constructions more regularly used in poetry).

in contrast inflected languages latin, german expresses cases more through article accompanies noun through inflection of noun; although number (singular vs. plural) expressed inflecting noun (der tisch, die tische). other exceptions of suffix expressing case of noun along article forms of genitive , dative singular , dative plural. yet, 1 still transferring case-information article preserved german case system throughout development old high german contemporary german.