Editing German grammar (section)

{{short description|Grammar of the German language}}
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{{German grammar}}

The [[grammar]] of the [[German language]] is quite similar to that of the other [[Germanic languages]].
Although some features of '''German grammar''', such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of English in that it has, among other things, [[grammatical case|cases]] and [[grammatical gender|gender]] in nouns and a strict [[V2 word order|verb-second word order]] in main clauses.

German has retained many of the grammatical distinctions that other [[Germanic languages]] have lost in whole or in part. There are three genders and four cases, and verbs are conjugated for [[grammatical person|person]] and [[grammatical number|number]]. Accordingly, German has more [[inflection]]s than English, and uses more [[suffix]]es. For example, in comparison to the -s added to third-person singular present-tense verbs in English, most German verbs employ four different suffixes for the conjugation of present-tense verbs, namely -{{lang|de|e}} for the first-person singular, -{{lang|de|st}} for the informal second-person singular, -{{lang|de|t}} for the third-person singular and for the informal second-person plural, and -{{lang|de|en}} for the first- and third-person plural, as well as for the formal second-person singular/plural.

Owing to the gender and case distinctions, the [[article (grammar)|articles]] have more possible forms. In addition, some prepositions combine with some of the articles.

Numerals are similar to other Germanic languages. Unlike modern English, [[Swedish language|Swedish]], [[Norwegian language|Norwegian]], [[Icelandic language|Icelandic]] and [[Faroese language|Faroese]], units are placed before tens as in [[Afrikaans]], [[Early Modern English]], [[Danish language|Danish]], [[Dutch language|Dutch]], [[Yiddish]] and [[Frisian languages|Frisian]], e.g. twenty-one: one-and-twenty.