Overview of the German parts of speech

(Tabular representation of the parts of speech in German grammar)

Table of contents – parts of speech

On this page you will find the following:

What are the German parts of speech?

German grammar offers ten different parts of speech which are divided into inflectable (the ones that change their form) and uninflectable (the ones that do not change) words. Those that do not inflect are particles. Those that inflect are further divided into conjugable and declinable categories.

Compare the subsequent juxtaposition:

Inflectable parts of speech

The inflectable or changeable parts of speech belong to two separate groups:

Declinable words	Conjugable words
Nouns Haus (house), Tee (tea), etc. Case Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Number Grammatical gender Natural gender	Verbs (action words) trinken (to drink), gehen (to go), etc. Main verbs Auxiliary verbs Modal verbs Copular verbs Personal verbs Impersonal verbs Participles Mood Grammatical person Grammatical voice
Articles der (the), das (the), ein (a/an), etc. Definite articles Indefinite articles
Adjectives schön (beautiful), laut (loud), etc.
Pronouns ich (I), du (you), jemand (somebody), etc.
Numerals fünf (five), viele (many), tausend (thousand), etc.

Uninflectable parts of speech

The parts of speech that do not inflect or change their forms are called particles. This category comprises four different types of words:

Indeclinable/uninflectable words
Adverbs dort (there), gerne (with pleasure), bald (soon), etc. Adjectival adverbs Conjunctional adverbs Pronominal adverbs
Prepositions in (in), über (across/over), davor (before), etc.
Conjunctions und (and), oder (or), außerdem (besides), etc.
Interjections nanu (well!, hey!), oh (oh), aua (ouch), ach (hmm), etc.

Further thematic explanations

The following explanations are relating to the topic ‘Parts of speech in German grammar’ and may be interesting too:

W question words in German
List of exercises about parts of speech