German Adjective Endings: Strong, Weak and Mixed in Three Tables

German adjective endings have a fearsome reputation, and the tables do nothing to help it. Three tables, four cases, three genders and a plural come to 48 slots, and a textbook will cheerfully ask you to memorise all of them.

Do not. There is one idea underneath all three tables, and once you have it most of the slots fill themselves in. The idea is this: every German noun phrase has to show its gender and case once. If the article has already done it, the adjective takes a lazy ending. If the article has not, the adjective does the work.

First: no ending after sein

Start with the case that needs nothing. An adjective after the noun, joined to it by sein, werden or bleiben, takes no ending at all:

Der Mann ist alt. - The man is old.

Die Stadt ist klein. - The town is small.

Das Buch ist gut. - The book is good.

That is the form in the dictionary and it never changes, whatever the gender or number. Endings only appear when the adjective stands in front of the noun: der alte Mann, die kleine Stadt, das gute Buch. The same goes for adverbs: Er spricht gut, never gute.

Weak endings: after der, die, das

After the definite article, the adjective has almost nothing left to say, because der, den, dem and the rest have already said it. So it takes one of two endings, -e or -en:

Look at the shape rather than the words. -e appears in exactly five slots: the three nominative singulars, and the feminine and neuter accusatives, which are identical to their nominatives anyway. Everything else is -en. Drawn as a table, the -e slots make a little block in the top left, the nominative corner, and that block is the only thing to memorise.

The same weak endings follow every word that behaves like der: dieser (this), jeder (every), welcher (which), and alle in the plural. Alle guten Dinge sind drei - all good things come in threes - is a proverb and a grammar lesson at once.

Mixed endings: after ein, kein, mein

ein shows its case most of the time, but in three slots it has no ending: masculine nominative, neuter nominative and neuter accusative. In those three, ein could be either gender, so the adjective steps in and shows it with the ending der or das would have had:

Compare this with the weak table and the difference is exactly three cells: alter instead of alte for the masculine, altes instead of alte for the neuter, twice. Everything else is identical. ein has no plural, so the plural column uses kein, which behaves like the possessives mein, dein and unser and takes weak -en throughout.

That is why mixed is the right name. It is the weak table with three strong endings patched in where ein fell silent.

Strong endings: no article at all

With no article, the adjective is the only word in front of the noun, so it has to carry the whole signal. It does that by borrowing the ending of the definite article:

Set der, den, dem beside guter, guten, gutem and the last letters match: r, n, m. die gives -e, das gives -es, der in the dative feminine gives -er. The only exception is the masculine and neuter genitive, where the noun already carries an -s and the adjective falls back to -en. Since the genitive with no article is rare outside set phrases, you can safely learn that last.

Strong endings are commoner than they look. They turn up with mass nouns (guter Kaffee, kaltes Wasser), after numbers (zwei kleine Kinder), after viele and einige (viele gute Leute), and in a lot of fixed greetings: Guten Tag, Gute Nacht, Guten Abend. Those are accusatives and nominatives you have been saying since the first week.

The logic in one sentence

Read the three tables together and they collapse into a single procedure:

1. Is there an article, or a word like dieser or mein, that shows the gender and case? Then the adjective takes -e in the nominative corner and -en everywhere else.
2. Is the article ein with no ending (masculine nominative, neuter nominative or accusative)? Then the adjective takes -er or -es.
3. Is there no article at all? Then the adjective takes the ending der, die or das would have had.

That is not three tables. It is one question: has anyone shown the gender and case yet? It also explains why the article table from the guide to German articles is the real prerequisite here. If you know der, den, dem cold, you already know the strong endings, and the weak ones are the leftovers.

One sentence, worked through

Here is the procedure applied to a real sentence, one noun phrase at a time:

Mein alter Freund wohnt mit seiner neuen Frau in einem kleinen Haus. - My old friend lives with his new wife in a small house.

• Mein alter Freund: the subject, masculine, nominative. mein has no ending here, exactly like ein, so nothing has shown the gender yet. The adjective does it: alter.
• mit seiner neuen Frau: mit takes the dative, and seiner already shows feminine dative with its -er. The adjective relaxes to -en.
• in einem kleinen Haus: in with a location takes the dative, and einem shows it. The adjective relaxes to -en again.

Three noun phrases, three different articles, and only one of them needed a distinctive ending on the adjective. That ratio is typical. In ordinary speech most adjectives you produce will end in -en or -e, and the real skill is spotting the handful of moments when the article has gone quiet and the adjective has to speak up.

Now change the first phrase to the object: Ich besuche meinen alten Freund. The article meinen now shows masculine accusative, so the adjective drops back to -en. Same adjective, same noun, different job in the sentence, and the ending moves because the article moved first.

Two adjectives, same ending

When two adjectives stand before the same noun, they take the same ending. ein großes neues Haus, der kleine alte Mann, mit gutem kaltem Wasser. German does not make the first one strong and the second one weak. Both are doing the same job, and both get the same ending.

The spelling quirks

A few adjectives change shape when they take an ending:

• hoch loses its c: Das Haus ist hoch but ein hohes Haus.
• Adjectives ending in -el drop the e before the ending, and those in -er often do too: dunkel becomes eine dunkle Nacht, teuer becomes ein teures Auto.
• A few colour words borrowed from other languages, such as lila and rosa, take no endings at all in careful German, though you will hear ein lilanes Kleid in speech.

And when an adjective stands in for a noun, it keeps its endings and gains a capital letter: etwas Neues (something new), nichts Gutes (nothing good), Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! (happy birthday, literally all good things).

Mistakes English speakers make

• Endings after sein. Der Mann ist alter is wrong. If the adjective comes after the verb, leave it bare.
• ein alte Mann. The weak -e after ein in the masculine nominative is one of the commonest adjective errors. ein has no ending there, so the adjective must supply -er.
• ein neue Haus. The same error in the neuter. It is ein neues Haus.
• Forgetting the dative. In the dative, weak and mixed endings are always -en: mit dem kleinen Kind, in einem großen Haus. Only with no article does the dative go strong, as in mit gutem Kaffee.
• Strong endings after keine or meine in the plural. keine guten Leute, not keine gute Leute. The possessives and kein do have a plural ending, so the adjective relaxes to -en.
• Declining the adverb. Er fährt schnell, never schnelle.

What to do next

Do not drill 48 cells. Learn the weak table's shape (five -e, eleven -en), then the three mixed patches (ein alter Mann, ein altes Haus, twice), then the strong endings as the article endings you already know. Practise with phrases rather than grids: ein guter Freund, eine kleine Stadt, ein neues Haus, mit dem alten Mann. Once these endings are comfortable, the comparative is a short step: ein größeres Haus takes exactly the same endings on a longer stem, as the German comparative and superlative shows, and the German course puts both in front of you in sentences rather than tables.