Word
Das Konzert ist am zweiten März.
Meaning
The concert is on the second of March.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Das Konzert ist am zweiten März.
sein
to be
das Konzert
the concert
der März
March
am
on the / at the
Questions & Answers about Das Konzert ist am zweiten März.
Why does the ordinal number end in -en (zweiten) instead of just zweite?
In German, ordinal numbers act like adjectives. Because we are using the word am (which is short for an dem, meaning it's in the dative case), the ordinal number must take the dative adjective ending -en. Whenever you state a specific date using am, the ordinal number will always end in -ten (or -sten for numbers 20 and up).
What exactly does am mean here?
The word am is a contraction of the preposition an (on) and the dative definite article dem (the). German always uses am to talk about specific days of the week and specific dates. So am zweiten März translates directly to "on the second of March."
If the concert was just sometime in March, not on a specific day, would I still use am?
No, you would use im instead. If you only mention a month or a season, you use im (short for in dem). You would say Das Konzert ist im März (The concert is in March). But because this sentence specifies the exact day (the second), we switch to am.
How do I build ordinal numbers like zweiten from the regular numbers I already know?
For numbers from 1 to 19, you generally just add a -t to the base number, followed by the adjective ending. So zwei (two) becomes zweit- plus the -en ending. Be careful with a few irregular ones you'll see often: eins becomes erste (first) and drei becomes dritte (third).