Einkaufen & Reklamation

To compare two things, add -er to the adjective and join the two halves with als: Die Jacke ist wärmer als der Pullover. For the top of the scale, use am …-sten: Diese Jacke ist am wärmsten. A few everyday words are irregular: gut → besser, gern → lieber, viel → mehr — and hoch → höher, nah → näher.

Two shop verbs put the person in the Dativ (dative case) and the product in the subject slot: passen (does it fit?) and gefallen (do you like it?) — Die Jacke passt mir, aber sie gefällt mir nicht. And zu + Adjektiv means “too …”: zu eng, zu teuer.

The comparative (der Komparativ). The productive pattern for the adjectives in this lesson is the ending -er on the adjective itself. German does not copy the English/Russian/Ukrainian helper-word pattern here: say wärmer and teurer, not mehr warm or mehr teuer. When you name the second side of an unequal comparison, introduce it with als:

Four things in that table are worth a second look. Many short adjectives take an Umlaut in both steps (warm → wärmer → am wärmsten; also alt, lang, kurz, groß, jung). Teuer loses the -e- of its stem: teurer, never teuerer. Hoch and nah change a consonant on the way: höher drops the -c- but am höchsten keeps it, and nah → näher sharpens to am nächsten. And the last three rows are simply irregular — they are the most frequent words of the group, so learn them as vocabulary: besser, lieber, mehr.

The superlative (der Superlativ). In the predicative pattern practised here, the superlative takes the fixed shape am … -sten: Diese Jacke ist am wärmsten. Both parts are obligatory in this pattern. You may also encounter an inflected noun-phrase form such as Das ist die wärmste Jacke; adjective declension is taught in its own A2 chapter. After -d, -t, -s, -ß and -z an extra -e- slides in for pronounceability: am kürzesten, am ältesten, am heißesten. One word in the table refuses that -e- and you simply have to know it: groß → am größten, never am größesten.

Attributive endings are not part of this lesson. Everything here stands after ist/sind: Die Jacke ist billiger. The forms that go directly in front of a noun (die billigere Jacke) belong to a later chapter — you can say everything you need in a shop without them.

Equality: so … wie. Where the two things are the same, German uses so … wie, and als would be wrong:

passen and gefallen in this shop pattern. To say that an item fits or appeals to someone, the product is the subject and the person experiencing it stands in the Dativ. The person can come first for emphasis (Mir gefällt die Jacke), but that does not make mir the subject.

English already agrees with German about passen — “the jacket doesn’t fit me” also makes the jacket the subject — so that instinct is safe to follow. Where English pulls the other way is gefallen: “I like the jacket” makes you the subject, and copying it produces the non-sentence ❌ Ich gefalle die Jacke. The German verb works like the older English “it appeals to me”: the jacket does the pleasing, and you are the one it pleases. The two neutral word orders are Die Jacke gefällt mir and Mir gefällt die Jacke:

Two details do the damage here. First, the verb agrees with the product, so a plural product means a plural verb: Die Schuhe passen mir — one shoe would be Der Schuh passt mir. Second, passen and gefallen answer two different questions, and a shop conversation needs both: passen is about the size, gefallen is about the look. That is why this sentence is neither strange nor contradictory:

Die Jacke passt mir, aber sie gefällt mir nicht.

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zu + Adjektiv. Zu in front of an adjective means “too much of it” — the size is wrong, the price is out of reach. It is not the same as sehr, which merely intensifies: Die Jacke ist sehr teuer (and I may still buy it) against Die Jacke ist zu teuer (and therefore I will not).

In the shop. The chunks you need for a return are short and fixed:

Use welch- + noun when the other person knows the set of options and you ask them to select one: Welche Jacke meinst du? Welchen Pullover möchten Sie? The article word occupies the same slot as der/die/das and copies its visible ending. First determine the noun’s role, then its form: der Pullover is welcher Pullover as a subject but welchen Pullover after möchten; after mit, die Karte becomes mit welcher Karte.

The noun is essential here. Free-standing Haben Sie welche? belongs to the pronoun system, not to this pattern. alle + plural noun uses the same article position: alle Kunden, mit allen Kunden.

Unbestimmte Begleiter — saying “some”, “many”, “most”. Comparing shops means talking about quantities that are not exact, and German has a small set of words that stand where der/die/das would stand. They take the same endings the plural article takes, so if you can say die Geschäfte, you can say all of these:

einige and manche are close, and the difference is worth one sentence: einige just counts (“a few of them”), while manche picks out cases against others (“some shops do, others don’t”). Note also that manche has nothing to do with manchmal (“sometimes”), which is an adverb about time — they only look related.

Three small-quantity expressions answer different questions. ein paar + plural gives a neutral small number: Ich brauche ein paar Schrauben. wenige + plural emphasises that the number is low, often lower than hoped: Nur wenige Größen sind noch da. wenig + non-count singular measures an amount rather than separate units: Ich habe wenig Zeit; Im Glas ist wenig Wasser.

The noun tells you which branch is possible. Countable objects can stand in the plural with ein paar or wenige. A substance or an abstract amount normally stays singular with wenig. The speaker’s stance then separates the two plural choices: ein paar simply says “some”; wenige says “not many”.

Capitalisation changes the analysis: ein Paar Schuhe is one pair as a unit; ein paar Schuhe is a few shoes. In ordinary sentence-initial position the capital letter cannot settle the question, so meaning and the following noun do.

Big numbers, and the one that trips everyone. A price tag is where you meet German numbers seriously, and they are built back to front: the unit comes before the ten. einundzwanzig is literally “one-and-twenty”, and it stays that way all the way up — vierundsechzig, neunundneunzig. Written as one word, always.

Above a hundred the und disappears: hunderteins, not “hundertundeins”. And note that Million is a real noun with an article (eine Million, zwei Millionen), unlike hundert and tausend, which are not.

❌ Diese Jacke ist mehr teuer. → ✅ Diese Jacke ist teurer. English builds long comparatives with “more” (“more expensive”), and the habit transfers straight into German. German never does this: the ending -er is the only tool, no matter how long the adjective is — bequemer, günstiger, interessanter.

❌ Die Jacke ist teurer wie der Pullover. → ✅ … teurer als der Pullover. In a comparison, als joins two different values; wie belongs to the equality pattern so … wie and to nothing else: so teuer wie der Mantel.

❌ Ich passe die Jacke nicht. → ✅ Die Jacke passt mir nicht. Here English is already German — “the jacket doesn’t fit me” makes the jacket the subject too — so the safe move is to trust it and keep the garment in front. The same holds for gefallen: ❌ Ich gefalle die Schuhe → ✅ Die Schuhe gefallen mir. That one is the English verb “like” leaking through: “I like the shoes” puts you in the subject slot, and German never does. Think “the shoes appeal to me” and the sentence builds itself.

❌ Die Schuhe gefällt mir. → ✅ Die Schuhe gefallen mir. The verb agrees with the product, not with the person — and die Schuhe is plural.

❌ Die Jacke ist sehr teuer, ich kaufe sie nicht. → ✅ Die Jacke ist zu teuer … sehr just intensifies; zu says the limit is crossed. If the price is the reason you walk away, the word is zu.

❌ Ich möchte der Pullover umtauschen. → ✅ Ich möchte den Pullover umtauschen. umtauschen takes an accusative object, and masculine der becomes den there.