Some prepositions take on the accusative case, some the dative and others the genitive. That's simple enough and straightforward. But then we have the two-faced prepositions, the so called dual-prepositions or doubtful prepositions who take on two of these cases depending on the sentence. There are nine of them...

Most of the time you need to use subjunctive II in order to form the conditional in German. But there are  a few other ways, such as with the preposition bei, that will provide you with a conditional sentence as well. See more on the conditional...

When I was growing up, one expression that was heard often among students was Der hat einen Vogel im Kopf or Sie hat einen Vogel, which basically means: "He/She is crazy." This is just one of many other common German expressions that have animals in it. See more of these expressions in German Animal Expressions.

The word order in German sentences can be very different from that found in English. For instance, the placing of verbs in a sentence can be tricky at times. Then you have smaller words such as conjunctions that can also change their position. In this short article find out more where  certain conjunctions should be placed.