Hammer that Grammar in! (Hammer's German Grammar and Usage)

Member Name: drown_doll

Product:	Hammer's German Grammar and Usage
Date:	16/12/03 (924 review reads)
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Hammer's German Grammar and Usage - this was one of the first books I was told to buy when I got to university in 2000. I have to say that I was a little put off by the price tag ? it was at least £20 (but then again, most university books that we have to buy are expensive). We also had to buy the workbook to go alongside it, which wasn?t much cheaper. I have the third edition of the book, which was updated in 1996.

The book is fairly thick and has 542 pages of German grammar fun - yay!!! Getting through this book was a daunting prospect and I was dreading it. Our initial Grammar lectures were completely based around the book, so there certainly was no alternative to actually working our way through it :(

The first few pages of the book are taken up by contents, a list of tables that appear in the book, abbreviations which are used and then prefaces to the second and third editions, which gives the spelling reform as the reason for this update.

The first actual chapter of the book is dedicated to Nouns - for anyone who has studied German in the past you will know that it isn't as simple as it is in English and there are so many things that you have to learn. First of, there is the gender of the noun - whether it be masculine, feminine or neuter. There are a few rules determining the gender of a noun, but there are almost certainly exceptions to these rules!

We also find out about plurals of nouns in this section. In English we usually add an 's' to imply that there is more than one object, but in German a number of adjustments to the original word can be made ? the addition of '-er', '-en', the use of an umlaut (ä/ö/ü) for example. There is a table here so that you can see a lot of the regular ways of pluralizing something.

The third subsection deals with Noun declension - what on earth is this I hear you cry? Well in German there are several cases...the word 'the' chang

es depending on gender and case. It's extremely difficult to get your head around and this section is excellent.

The second chapter deals with 'cases' - first off the nominative (the neutral case), then the accusative, thirdly the genitive and lastly the dative. There are so many different reasons for using each of these cases, and for me to go into any more detail would probably just confuse those of you who don't know/study German. This book gives every instance where you use each case and it is brilliant help for me (an advanced student!).

The third chapter talks about Personal Pronouns - these refer to the speaker or to other people who are mentioned. An example of this would be 'me', 'I', 'my', 'mine'. The cases can change these too - so again it would be pointless to go into any more detail, apart from to say that the following areas are covered in depth:

Forms of personal pronouns, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns, pronouns of address, third person pronouns, third person pronoun or prepositional adverb?, special uses of the pronoun 'es'.

'The Articles' is the heading of the fourth chapter. As I previously mentioned articles in German change depending on case, but there are also several other factors to take into account, such as whether or not it is the definite or indefinite article (the same as in English). Sometimes the use of an article isn't always necessary with abstract nouns, but here we are told which to use them with.

Generalisations are also touched upon. We sometimes use 'the' to indicate 'all' - for example 'the microwave is a great modern invention'. Also the use of an article with place names is very important. In English how often do you hear 'the France is a great country'? In German it is different and complications can often arise, months and days can also take an article.
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pter five is 'Other determiners and pronouns' explaining the use of words such as 'that', 'such' and 'which'. If you are in any doubt as to what word you should be using to express any of those words in German, then this is an excellent section. It contains very detailed information (and I would recommend the exercises in the work book to go with it).

We all know what an 'adjective' is, right? Yeah, course you do! You learned all about them at Primary school - those dreaded describing words that you just have to squeeze in to any story to make it worthy of a house point (or whatever they have nowadays!). Well - adjectives can be right little buggers (as this section tells us)! What would you say if I told you that they had to agree with the noun? If the noun is feminine, it's quite easy - but with masculine, it's almost impossible (so this chapter is a Godsend!). For masculine nouns, if you use 'the' then the adjective takes the feminine form, if you use 'a' then it has its own form - strange, huh? The ending of the adjectives also change depending on what case you use! If you're lost, then I would definitely recommend you check out this part of the book!

Chapter seven deals with 'adverbs' - now, do you know what they are? I always got muddled up with these when I was at school, but to put it simply an adverb is a word used to describe the verb e.g. 'I did my work well' - well is the adverb. But they (as I discovered) are also words which "do not inflect and which express relations of time, place, manner and degree" - once, there, therefore etc. The main adverbs, which you will need to know and use, are covered in depth in this section - very handy!

Next we come to 'Comparison of adjectives and adverbs'. Does anyone here know what the 'superlative' form is? Or how about the 'comparative' form? The
usual adje
ctive would be 'good', the comparative would be 'better' and the superlative would be 'best'. Understood? Well it's not so simple in German as this section explains. The formation of these two forms is a lot easier than in English though - the ending just changes to imply which form is it.

Chapter nine is entitled 'Numerals'. Here the main sections are Cardinal Numbers, Ordinal Numbers, Fractions, Other Numerical Usages, and Addresses. A long number in German is found written down in full form a lot more frequently than in English - here we learn how to write it, when and why it changes and other main uses of numbers - quite complicated, but explained fairly well.

The introduction to chapter 10, 'Modal Particles', is fairly long in itself, which indicates the complexity of the subject matter, so I will just give you a few examples. The use of 'aber' to express disagreement or contradiction or to add emphasis to an opinion. Other words such as 'also', 'only' and 'that' are explained in detail.

'Expressions of time', chapter 11, is probably one of the easiest ones in the book - it's not simple though, don't get me wrong. The whole book takes a lot of dedication to get through and writing this review is really making me realise that I need to spend a lot more time on my German grammar (especially as I have a 2500 word German essay to write for after Christmas!). Times of the Clock, Days of the Week/Month/Public Holidays and Dates are the first few sections. After that we get a lot of information about how the use of these expressions can change depending on case (well, what doesn't in German?). The reader is also told about the differences between English and German with the use of 'since', 'for' and 'until', which is very handy to know -I still make big mistakes in this area.

Chapter 12 -
Verbs: Conjugation - basically a lot of information about how to conjugate verbs (as the title implies!). There are also many exceptions to the rules and verb tables are included to give you a lot more help.

Chapter 13, 'The Infinitive and the Participles'. In English the infinitive would be the form of the verb before conjugation, such as 'to be', 'to play'. The infinitive is frequently
used in German and this section gives you a lot of information about when and how to use it. The present and past participles are also explained. The present participle would be 'following' and the past 'followed'. In English we can use them both as 'adjectives', as well as adverbs and other things. Difficult? Read this chapter and I guarantee it will help. I think the fact that we really don't study a lot of grammar at school makes it a lot trickier to learn a second language!

Chapter 14 - 'Uses of the Tenses'. This is very different to how it is in English, with English possibly being the more difficult. We have a few forms of the present tense e.g. 'I do', 'I am doing'. These would both be translated exactly the same in German - a lot easier, huh? Well the rest of the section explains the difficulties of the uses of tenses - so it's not all that simple, even for native speakers!

The passive - not as easy as it seems. Chapter 15 deals with the passive voice, which describes an action being done to a noun, rather than the noun doing the action:

The dog bit the man

The man was bitten by the dog = passive

Understand the difference? In English we tend to use the passive a lot more than in other languages, and therefore this section also outlines alternatives to this voice. But don't stop reading now; it's not all that simple. There are two types of the passive:

The door is open

The door is opened
Tric
ky! I really feel as though I should be getting a commission for recommending this book so highly, but honestly, this book really does help!

Mood - chapter 16. The imperative and the subjunctive - two of the three moods used in German. Put simply, the imperative is an order, e.g. 'Help!' or 'Stop that right now!' you or someone else is telling somebody what to or what not to do.

The subjunctive is a little more difficult though. We actually have it in English and I would
say that the majority of people have no idea what it is or how to use it. Which of the following sentences is correct?

I wish I was a fairy

I wish I were a fairy

Well it may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you, but the second is in fact correct and it shows the use of the subjunctive mood. The subjunctive can be used to indicate wish, doubt, even reported speech. I'm hopeless at explaining this though, so read up!

I feel that perhaps I am making this review a little too long for some people?s liking and therefore I am just going to outline the major points of the last few chapters.

Chapter 17 - The modal auxiliaries - this basically explains the use of 'dürfen', 'können', 'mögen', 'müssen' 'sollen' and 'wollen' and the difficulties which one could encounter.

Chapter 18 - Verbs: Valency - this is a very difficult chapter to understand. We studied it, but I have never really used it since (not knowingly anyway). Basically here you learn how to work out how many other features you need to have with certain verbs.

Chapter 19 - Conjunctions and Subordination - this tells us what words to use to link two clauses together and also problems we could have with them.

Chapter 20 - Prepositions - I hate these tiny little words - they rule my life (well my student life anyway). Words such as 'with', 'by', 'through
' - how many times have you wondered whether or not you travel 'by train', 'with the train' or 'on the train'? well, all are possible I guess - but imagine having to do that in a foreign language. It's so tricky!

Chapter 21 - Word Order - anyone who is now thinking 'Time, Manner, Place?' - you're not necessarily correct all of the time! What about 'dative before accusative' then? Well, what happens if those two rules contradict each other? Itss something very difficult to grasp! The verb in German is usually the second position, so 'I went to the shops' would be correct. But if you want to say 'yesterday I went to the shops', then that would be wrong - you would have to say 'yesterday went I to the shops' - here you see the verb as the second idea in the sentence.

Chapter 22 - Word Formation - this tells us about Methods of Word Formation, the Formation of Nouns, the Formation of Adjectives, the Formation of Verbs: inseparable/separable/varaible prefixes, Verb Formation (other than prefixes).

The 23rd and final chapter is all about Spelling and Punctuation - brilliant! I think I need a guide to this in English (although I haven?t yet used my spell check!). All nouns in German have capitals, so an English sentence using German capitalisation rules would be like this: Amy bought some Chocolate on Monday. Punctuation is very important too, and in fact, since I started learning German some of the rules have changed - so take this into account if you think that something in this section is incorrect.

After these chapters we find a Bibliography and references - a very long section (well, compared to the ones I have at the end of my essays). Next is a German word index, then an English index, followed by a topic index (plenty of indexes, eh?).

The book is written very well and explains each tiny bit of grammar in an awful lot of detail. This i
s definitely only suitable for advanced students of the German language, as a lot of the language used is fairly technical. That would be the only drawback for me - having not studied a lot of grammar at school there are several terms which I am not clear about (judging by my brief outline of each chapter you?ve probably already gathered that!).

I would definitely recommend this to all university students and apparently it's detailed enough for lecturers/teachers too (according to the blurb on the reverse cover). It is not very appealing in appearance - black with red and yellow (like the German flag). Inside the writing is fairly condensed, but the use of tables makes it a lot easier on the eye. It's easy to find what you're looking for too, as the contents and indexes are very precise!



Thanks for reading ? I hope you?re not too bored yet!!

xxx