By Kugel
The words for to live are wohnen and leben. They differ in that wohnen means to reside somewhere, and leben means to be alive.
Recall that wo means where
The word for still is noch
Verbs always take the second position, so if you wanted to say my aunt is still living you must put the verb in the second position(second position doesn’t mean second word!) You’ll get used to this as you progress through German.
The word for now is jetzt
Now try now before the verb
You usually put the time before place
I’m going to introduce a rule about the order of pronouns and nouns. Just remember ADDA. Think ABBA but with Ds instead of Bs. ADDA is about the order of objects: Accusative pronoun--Dative pronoun and Dative noun--Accusative noun
The accusative for er is ihn
The word for gave is gab
Gab works for both 1st person and 3rd person singular. This is such a common verb that it’s important to learn its irregularies early on.
The dative er is ihm
Consider the sentence: Ich gab es ihm
You’ll notice that there are two pronouns. How is one supposed to know the order of the pronouns? Afterall, word order in German can get very erradict. This is where the ADDA rule comes into play. AD in ADDA says that accusative pronouns come before dative pronouns.
Recall before how masculine nouns had der nominative and den accusative. It’s dem for the dative.
Consider the sentences:
Er gab ihn dem Kommunisten. This means He gave him to the communist
Er gab ihm den Kommunisten This means He gave the communist to him
Recall that der Kommunist is a weak noun, so all the endings are -en expect the nominative singular.
In the ADDA example we had just the pronouns. Now we have one pronoun and one noun. The pronoun always comes first, regardless of the case.
Here is a sentence with just 2 pronouns again
The DA in ADDA refers to the order of objects when it’s just nouns. When there are no pronouns, then order is dative then accusative
The dative for feminine the is der
Good, so now with ADDA we can figure out the order of objects. This is a lot to take in, so in the future lessons there will be many prompts in regards to the different cases. Who would’ve thought that dative feminine the would be der when der is masculine for the nominative case? It will take some getting used to.