Elon.io is an online learning platform
We have an entire course teaching German grammar and vocabulary.
Questions & Answers about Der Berg war wunderschön.
The lesson is about the Perfekt tense. Why does this sentence use war instead of the Perfekt form ist gewesen?
Even in spoken German, which usually prefers the Perfekt tense for talking about the past, the verb sein (to be) is a major exception. Germans almost always use its simple past form war because it is shorter and much more natural to say than ist gewesen.
Why doesn't the adjective wunderschön have an ending here?
In German, adjectives only get extra endings when they are placed directly in front of a noun. Because wunderschön comes after the verb to describe the subject, it stays in its basic dictionary form.
How does the word wunderschön break down?
It combines Wunder (miracle or wonder) with schön (beautiful). Adding wunder- to the beginning of an adjective is a common way to make it stronger, turning beautiful into absolutely gorgeous.
How do we know the gender of Berg from this sentence?
We can look at the word for 'the' at the start of the sentence. Der Berg is the subject of the sentence, so it is in the basic nominative case. Since it uses Der, we know that Berg is a masculine noun.