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How to learn (German) grammar with Anki

A reader who was getting a pretty good vocabulary base asked me how to start
developing a base in German grammar, and I took the opportunity to write out a pretty

complete reply. The principles should apply to any grammar youre learning (and if you

dont see how, please post a comment or email me so I can make sure that Im not

missing something). Enjoy!

You need a collection of explicit grammar cards for each grammar rule. These can be

broken down into two categories:

Morphology cards (where one root word changes depending on its context, a.k.a. verb

conjugations depend on the subject (I/you/we), adjective endings/articles depend on the

case and gender of nouns, plurals (need to be learned individually, though there are some

patterns), etc.

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and

Syntax cards, which cover word order where to put what in the sentence. German has

particularly di cult syntax issues like separable pre x verbs, and the tendency for verbs

to y to the end of the sentence.

Youll want to get a decent grammar book that shows you all of these rules, tells you

exceptions, etc.

Morphology cards:

You want to have at least one model for each and every basic morphology challenge in

the language. This will look like a lot of cards and you might be tempted to group a few

together (For example, putting the 6 conjugations of sein on one card, or all the singular

pronouns on another card). Every time I do that, I regret it. You save a lot of time in the

long run keeping them all as separate as possible. It makes each card very easy to

remember, very separate in your brain, and as soon as you forget something, Anki will

make sure you see it often again so that you remember it.

The basic idea is that you pick a model sentence, change some small aspect of it, and see

how the other words respond. Get yourself a small collection of nouns in each gender
and use them in your examples. Write out your cards, and make sure to double-check

them on Lang-8 (or make your examples come from 100% proofread sources). Lets say

our model sentence is: Das Auto ist klein [The car is small]

You can generate quite a bit out of this one:

1. 4 cards for der/die/das

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(der/die/das) Auto ist klein. (der/die/das) Stadt ist klein. (der/die/das) Wagen ist klein.

(der/die/das) Bcher sind klein.

2. 10 cards for (sein). Well switch the adjective to reich, just for fun. Youre training

conjugation here, but maybe more importantly, it will also help substantially for keeping

the pronouns separate in your head. You wont need to do all 10 like this for every verb

(or even ever again; but doing it once is important.):

Ich ___ reich (sein) [I am rich, you are rich, etc] Du ___reich(sein) er ___reich(sein)*

sie (singular) ___reich(sein)* es ___reich(sein)* Sie (singular)___reich(sein)**

wir___reich(sein) ihr___reich(sein) sie (plural)___reich(sein)** Sie

(plural)___reich(sein)**

*Make notes on the back side of each card that er = sie(sing) = es **Make notes on the

back side of each card that Sie (sing) = sie (plural) = Sie (plural)

Your main goal here is to form 6 boxes in your head that t the 6 parts of speech, and

start to group pronouns with the same part of speech together (so every time you see

Sie(sing), it jumps to thesame box as the two plural sie forms, and every time you see

sie(sing), it jumps to the same box as es and er).

3. 4 cards for adjective endings in nominative case: The pretty car/city/etc. is small.

das (schn) Auto ist klein die (schn) Stadt ist klein der (schn) Wagen ist klein die
(schn) Bcher sind klein

4. A few more sets of cards for ein/eine/ein/ (plural card is just Bcher sind klein),

kein/keine/kein/keine, dieser/diese/dieses/diese

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That should give you a decently solid base in the nominative case after a few repetitions

in Anki. Id wait a little while for that to settle, then head into the next cases:

Accusative model: Ich sehe den Mann [I see the man/a man/no man/that man]

5. 16 cards for inde nite/de nite articles. After this case, youll probably get a sense that
ein and kein share forms and diese/die share forms and you might be able to move down
to just 8 of these sorts of cards for future cases :

Ich sehe (das Auto) Ich sehe (die Stadt) Ich sehe (der Wagen) Ich sehe (die Bcher)

Ich sehe (ein Auto) Ich sehe (eine Stadt) Ich sehe (ein Wagen) Ich sehe (Bcher)

Ich sehe (kein Auto) Ich sehe (keine Stadt) Ich sehe (kein Wagen) Ich sehe (keine Bcher)

Ich sehe (dieses Auto) Ich sehe (diese Stadt) Ich sehe (dieser Wagen) Ich sehe (diese

Bcher)

6. 8 cards for adjective endings [I see the pretty car/city/car/books]

Ich sehe das (schn) Auto Ich sehe die (schn) Stadt Ich sehe den (schn) Wagen Ich sehe
die (schn) Bcher

Ich sehe ein (schn) Auto Ich sehe eine (schn) Stadt Ich sehe einen (schn) Wagen Ich

sehe keine (schn) Bcher (switched to keine since theres no plural ein)

7. 10 cards for pronoun transformations + 2 questions: [Johannes sees me/you/him/her]

Johannes sieht (ich) Johannes sieht (du) Johannes sieht (er) Johannes sieht (sie (sing))

Johannes sieht (Sie (sing))* Johannes sieht (es) Johannes sieht (wir) Johannes sieht (ihr)

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Johannes sieht (sie (pl))* Johannes sieht (Sie (pl))*

8. Youll want a few cards in each case to deal with question words:

Nominative: Front of card: (Wer) ist er? > Back of card:Wer ist er? [Who is he] (Wer)

seid ihr? > Wer seid ihr? [Who are you?]

(Was) ist das? > Was ist das? [What is that?]

Accusative:

(Wer) sieht Johannes? > Wen sieht Johannes? (Whom sees Johannes?) [Whom does
Johannes see?] (Was) sieht Johannes? > Was sieht Johannes? (What sees Johannes?)

[What does Johannes see?]

Youll want Dative and Genitive versions of how wer and was change in di erent cases

(or dont change, for was)

*After these, you can start grouping the plural sie forms with the formal Sie singular in
future cases if you want.

Dative Model: Ich gebe einem/dem Mann ein Brtchen. (I give the man a

bun/bread)

Same as above #5-8. Youll need to change up some of your nouns to they make sense in
context. (Ich gebe der Stadt ein Brtchen or Ich gebe den Bcher ein Brtchen is a

pretty weird idea, maybe better to use die Frau, das Mdchen and die Mnner or
something)

The questions (#8) will dance around in terms of syntax a bit

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(Wer) gibst du das Brtchen? >Wem gibst du das Brtchen?

These are the sort of thing you should try out on lang-8 and see if you get it right. At this

point, you should be using Lang-8 as a testing ground. Just write individual sentences,
change something, and see if you know how the rest of the sentence will respond. If you

dont know, guess. Lang-8 is mostly about making informed mistakes. Youre looking for
where your current sense of the language doesnt quite work, so you can nd out what

does work. Try this out to generate the Genitive questions (once you get there); make
something up and see if it works or not.

One thing thats important here, is that you should make sure each sentence you write

makes sense to you before you put it in. If it doesnt, change things around (like using
Frau instead of Stadt, for example) until it makes sense. Youre learning grammar, but you

need to connect it to meaning. If you absolutely cant think of how a given example
could logically work, then skip it for now and come back to it later. For example, (Was)

gibst du das Brtchen? doesnt work. If you want to force Was into dative case, youll
eventually nd that you can do it with prepositions, but its a subject youll hit later on
and will form a new topic in grammar (zu + was = wozu, for example. Its a weird

construction). So skip that one for now.

Genitive Model: Ich habe das Buch des/eines Mannes (I have the book [of the man])

Same thing, just youll need an additional 4 cards to deal with the changing morphology

of the noun, too:

9. 4 Genitive noun cards:

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Ich habe das Buch des (Mann) Ich habe das Buch der (Frau) Ich habe das Buch des
(Mdchen) Ich habe das Buch der (Mnner)

(For readers dealing with languages where the nouns do this all the time [aka most slavic
languages], this is what most of your grammar cards will look like)

Give that a bit of time and get that decently memorized. Now add a series of cards that
go backwards:

10. 12 reverse cards (identify the case)

Im putting the examples in 100% German. You can stick to the English, but I like to keep
English entirely out of my decks wherever possible. Ill generate questions like this one
with google translate if i have to, then doublecheck them on lang-8)

Welcher Fall? (Which case?) (Im pretty sure, though Id check this on lang-8) der Werfall:
nominative, der Wenfall (accusative), der Wemfall (dative), der Wesfall (genitive) z.B. or
zum Beispiel: for example

Two examples: Front of card: Welcher Fall?: der Mann Back of card: der
Werfall/Nominativ: z.B.: Der Mann ist gro

Front of card: Welcher Fall? die Frau Back of card: der Werfall + der Wenfall. z.B.: Die
Frau ist gro Ich sehe die Frau

Youll need 12 of these: 4 masculine, 2 feminine, 3 neuter and 3 plural (because feminine is

only die or der). Its your choice as to whether you also want 12 more for ein/kein for
reinforcement. The endings are the same. If this was my very rst foreign language and I

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was early in the process, Id probably add them. More reinforcement with slightly

di erent variables helps your brain generalize, so that when you try to play with dieser,
for example, you will be more likely to pick the right ending naturally.

Generating the examples may seem like a lot of work; keep in mind that this is where and

how you actually learn the grammar. The Anki cards are just a reminder of that learning
process. Even if all of these cards were pre-written and you could just download an
appropriate grammar deck (and Im not aware of such a thing), Id strongly recommend
writing your own it turns the abstract, external idea of German Grammar into

yourgrammar and yourexamples, and its potentially the most important step here. If my
book becomes successful and I get the opportunity to write a German-spec c book, my
goal is going to be to make all relevant information as accessible as possible, but stop
slightly short of actually writing out each and every card; there needs to be enough

interaction with the grammar to make these cards your own. (I hope that makes sense;
Im going to have to expand on that topic quite a bit at some point soon)

Youll need cards for verb conjugations as well. I covered that brie y in a reader Q&A
over here.

Prepositions tend to bene t from two or 3 types of cards, one shows the e ect of that
preposition on its neighbors, and one :

Wir fahren durch die Stadt. (We drive through the city)

Card 1: Front: Wir fahren durch (die Stadt) Back: Wir fahren durch die Stadt (Akkusativ)

Card 2: Front: Wir fahren ____ die Stadt Back: Wir fahren durch die Stadt.

Card 3: Front: durch Back: Wir fahren durchdie Stadt (and maybe add Wiktionary
de nition, too)

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Card type #3 is only for prepositions that have a pretty xed de nition. Many
prepositions have quite a few di erent meanings in di erent contexts, and for those,

youll have enough card type 2s to deal with that complication and can (and should) skip
card type 3. If a preposition has more than 2 signi cantly di erent meanings, Id skip card
type 3.

That should pretty much cover morphology. Syntax is shorter, at least in terms of
covering the basics:

The about.com German syntax articles are not

bad:http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa032700a.htm

They cover the main issues youll run into, particularly that verbs are always in the second

position in the sentence (and what it means for them to be in the second position: Heute
kommt Erik nach Hause: Today comes Erik home, Vor zwei Tagen kommt er nach Hause:
Two days ago comes he home), the time-manner-place order that German prefers (Erik
kommt heute mit der Bahn nach Hause: Erik comes today on the train home), and the

verb-last quirks of german (Es gibt eine Umleitung, weil die die Strae reparieren wollen
There is a detour, because they the street to repair want)

You end up doing much same thing as you did with morphology: take some models,

change a few things about them and see what happens. You want a couple examples for
each basic point of syntax.

Here are some models:

Erik kommt nach Hause. (Erik comes/is coming home) Erik kommt heute nach Hause. (Erik
is coming today home) Erik kommt heute mit der Bahn nach Hause. (Erik is coming today

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with the train home) Heute kommt Erik nach Hause ( heute) (Today is coming Erik home)
Vor zwei Tagen kommt er nach Hause (Two days ago is coming Erik home) Wie gesagt,
Erik kommt heute nach Hause. (As was said, Erik is coming today home) Der Hund beit
den Mann (The dog bites/is biting the man) Den Mann beit der Hund. (same meaning as

previous, note use of accusative case) Beit der Hund den Mann? (The dog bites/is biting
the man) Beit den Mann der Hund?(same meaning as previous, note use of accusative
case) Erik kommt heute an. Erik arrives today. (Erik comes today (arrival pre x))

Heres what you can do with them:

Insert the word in the right spot:Front > Back Erik, nach Hause (kommt) >Erik
kommt nach Hause. Erik kommt nach Hause (heute) > Erik kommt heute nach Hause
Erik heute nach Hause (kommt) > Erik kommt heute nach Hause Erik kommt heute.

(nach Hause) > Erik kommt heute nach Hause Heute Erik nach Hause (kommt) >
Heute kommt Erik nach Hause (Betonung: heute) Erik kommt heute nach Hause. (mit der
Bahn)>Erik kommt heute mit der Bahn nach Hause. Wie gesagt, Erik heute nach
Hause. (kommt)>Wie gesagt, Erik kommt heute nach Hause. Erik kommt heute nach

Hause. (Wie gesagt,)>Wie gesagt, Erikkommtheute nach Hause. Erik heute

(ankommen) > Erik kommt heute an.

Transformations:Front > Back

Der Hund beit den Mann (Ja/Nein Frage?) >Beit der Hund den Mann? Erik kommt
heute an (Wann?) > Wann kommt Erik an? Ich wei nicht + Wann kommt Erik an >
Ich wei nicht, wann Erik ankommt.

There are two basic approaches to getting the grammar into your head the systematic
approach, where you go through each variable one by one and quiz yourself on the
changes, using a very small group of models, and the shotgun approach, where you nd

examples of the grammar from all over the place and quiz yourself on those. Use both.

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Syntax will tend to use a lot of shotgun, because after a while, youve memorized Erik
kommt heute nach Hause pretty well and your goal becomes trying to generalize that

basic model to new contexts.

Remember to get a good grammar book and grab examples from it; it will make your job
much much easier: it should give you a bunch of ready-made examples, it should give you

a bunch of ready made questions that are basicallyalreadyin ashcard format, and it
should have a sensible order with which you should learn each thing (learn nominative,
genders and plurals before doing accusative, do accusative before dative, do 2-case
prepositions after accusative and dative, etc. Any decent grammar book will give you all

of these things. Use lang-8 when you want to test theories (what if there are 2 subjects?
What if I combine mchte with a separable pre x verb like ankommen? etc. )

FILED UNDE R: BLOG, LEARN GE RMAN TAGGE D WI T H: ANKI, FLASHCARDS, GERMAN,

GRAMMAR

gwyner

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