Review: Articles

We cannot say this too often: You must learn the articles of nouns! Articles help identify the gender and case of the nouns they precede. It is even more important than you thought, because there are several groups of words which can substitute for the articles (taking not only their place but their function of identifying the specific or general noun and its place in the sentence): the adjectives this, that, none, mine, which, every, many, etc.. These groups of words, which we will call DETERMINERS, are declined either like der or like ein.

So here is a quick reminder of how those all-important little words are declined:

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural (all genders)
Nominative	der	die	das	die
Genitive	des	der	des	der
Dative	dem	der	dem	den
Accusative	den	die	das	die

You will recall that the indefinite article, as in English, has no plural forms: a mink coat is expensive, mink coats are expensive.

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nominative	ein	eine	ein
Genitive	eines	einer	eines
Dative	einem	einer	einem
Accusative	einen	eine	ein

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