
The tail of a cat is an indicator of the various moods of a cat. So it is up to you to interpret whether a statement is universal or not from the context and sense of the sentence.ĭer Katzenschwanz ist ein Indikator für die unterschiedlichen Stimmungen der Katze. German, however, often still needs the noun articles in order to clarify the sentence syntax. In English we signal a universal statement by avoiding "the" and/or using plural forms of nouns. This is particularly important for you to consider when a German sentence makes a universal statement.

dem and einem are unique to singular dative.des and eines are unique to singular genitive.This reading skill is sometimes going to be crucial for understanding the structure of German sentences. For example: Whenever you encounter der, you need to know that you are dealing with either nominative masculine, dative feminine, genitive feminine, or genitive plural.

What you need to memorize is the "range of meanings" of each article. The following charts summarize the article forms and noun spelling changes across all four cases.
