Exercise 5 for Lesson 3

Grammar

The Possessive -s is similar to English. But Germans leave out the apostrophe (’):

Wo ist Frau Maywalds Büro?
Where is Mrs. Maywald’s office?

Exceptions are words that end on -s, , -x, or -z. Here, we leave out the s, not the apostrophe:

Das ist Fritz Büro.
That is Fritz’s office.

Hint

Let’s take another look at the dialog:

Meili: Wo ist Frau Maywalds Büro?
Where is Mrs. Maywald’s office?

Paul: Hmmm… das Büro von Anna Maywald?
Hmmm… the office of Anna Maywald?

We see that we can avoid using the possessive -s by using the word von.

learn to ride with training wheels

For now, you’re still riding with training wheels. That means in our writing exercises, it is currently no problem if you forget a punctuation mark (,.!?) or disregard upper and lower case. But that will change soon! So remember for the future: All nouns and sentence beginnings in capital letters, the rest in lower case.

  5   Rephrase the sentences
Move the orange boxes with the words in the right order. 📱↷ Turn your mobile phone for a better view of the whole sentence. If you can’t write äöü, and ß then replace them with aeoeue, and ss.

 

Change the sentences using the possessive -s.


Take a look at how the German sentence matches the English sentence word for word.


Ich weiß, wo das Büro von Frau Maywald ist. ➞ Ich weiß, wo Frau Maywalds Büro ist.

I know where the office of Mrs. Maywald is. ➞ I know where Mrs. Maywald‘s office is.


Der Tag von Paul ist ok. ➞ …

The day of Paul is ok. ➞ Paul‘s day is ok.

  • ist ok.
  • Pauls
  • Tag

Ich suche die Nummer von Paul. ➞ Ich suche .

I’m looking for the number of Paul. ➞ I’m looking for Paul‘s number.

Now change the sentences using the word von.

Annas Büro ist neu. ➞ Das Büro von Anna ist neu.

Anna‘s office is new. ➞ The office of Anna is new.

Fritz Frau ist nicht hier. ➞ …
Fritz‘s wife is not here. ➞ The wife of Fritz is not here.



  • Fritz
  • Die
  • ist nicht hier.
  • von
  • Frau

Igors Frau arbeitet in Deutschland. ➞ arbeitet in Deutschland.

Igor‘s wife works in Germany. ➞ The wife of Igor works in Germany.


 


lesson plan

Mark this lesson:  

Next lesson:

2 Responses

  1. Hi Christian, I’m having trouble changing the possessive S to von. I’ll have another go until I get it. Good news is I have figured out how to mark lesson as done. I I was trying to mark each page of lesson instead of end of lessons. I am enjoying this very much. I have tried a few podcasts and this is the best so far.cheers Purna

Ask/answer an important question. Or report a bug: