Adjective Declension

Let's build flexible sentences, by learning how to properly decline adjectives in the nominative and accusative cases.

👋This lesson is about German adjective declension. It's part of our free A1 German lessons. As a beginner, also make sure to check out our section on easy German texts to read & our simple stories for beginners

Welcome to another lesson about adjectives. This time, we'll go a little bit deeper and explore German adjective declension.

Attributive Adjectives

In the previous lesson, we used predicative adjectives, where the adjective comes after the verb. For example:

Die Schildkröte ist grün und isst einen Apfel.

The turtle is green and eats an apple.

Predicative adjectives rely on a linking verb, like ist in the sentence above.

However, attributive adjectives come before the noun and don’t need a linking verb, allowing for more flexibility in sentence structure. For example:

Die grüne Schildkröte isst einen Apfel.

The green turtle eats an apple.

Notice how the adjective grün is declined to grüne. This is because, when placed before the noun, both the article & the adjective become responsible for indicating it‘s case.

Predicative Adjectives	Attributive Adjectives
... are used after the noun	... are used just before the noun
... don't decline	... decline

Declension Indicates Case

In German, identifying the case of a noun is important because it tells us the role it plays in a sentence, such as a subject or object. We can determine the noun’s case through declension.

Declension is the process of changing (inflecting) adjectives, nouns, articles, and pronouns to reflect the German cases.

Two types of words undergo declension: determiners (like articles) and attributive adjectives.

Type	Example	Declines?
definite articles	der, die, das	👍
indefinite articles	ein, eine	👍
adjectives	lecker, groß, schön	👍

Check out these sentences:

Der kalte Wind weht.

the cold wind blows

Kalter Wind weht.

cold wind blows

In both, the case of the noun der Wind is clear through the declension of the article and/or adjective (nominative).

Adjective Declension (Nominative & Accusative)

Strong, Weak and Mixed Declension

Now that we know that attributive adjectives must decline, let's learn how to do this.

There are three ways to decline adjectives: strong, mixed and weak.

Strong Declension:

Case	Masc	Fem	Neut	Plural
Nom	roter Apfel	rote Blume	rotes Haus	rote Autos
Acc	roten Apfel	rote Blume	rotes Haus	rote Autos
Dat	rotem Apfel	roter Blume	rotem Haus	roten Autos
Gen	roten Apfels	roter Blume	roten Hauses	roter Autos

Strong Declension

Mixed Declension:

Case	Masc	Fem	Neut	Plural
Nom	ein roter Apfel	eine rote Blume	ein rotes Haus	meine roten Autos
Acc	einen roten Apfel	eine rote Blume	ein rotes Haus	meine roten Autos
Dat	einem roten Apfel	einer roten Blume	einem roten Haus	meinen roten Autos
Gen	eines roten Apfels	einer roten Blume	eines roten Hauses	meiner roten Autos

Mixed Declension

Weak Declension:

Case	Masc	Fem	Neut	Plural
Nom	der rote Apfel	die rote Blume	das rote Haus	die roten Autos
Acc	den roten Apfel	die rote Blume	das rote Haus	die roten Autos
Dat	dem roten Apfel	der roten Blume	dem roten Haus	den roten Autos
Gen	des roten Apfels	der rote Blume	des rote Hauses	der roten Autos

Weak Declension

Notice that weak declension only uses -e and -en endings, while strong declension uses -er, -e, and -es endings to indicate noun gender as well as case, just like definite articles do.

To determine which type of declension to use, we can follow these rules: