Breakdown of Wir leben im einundzwanzigsten Jahrhundert.
wir
we
leben
to live (be alive, exist)
im
in the (used with months) / in the (contraction of in + dem)
einundzwanzigste
twenty-first
das Jahrhundert
the century
Questions & Answers about Wir leben im einundzwanzigsten Jahrhundert.
How do we build "twenty-first", and why does it end in -sten here?
For numbers 20 and up, German forms the ordinal by adding -ste to the number (so einundzwanzig becomes einundzwanzigste). It gets an extra -n at the end here (einundzwanzigsten) because it is acting as an adjective. After the dative contraction im, adjectives take the ending -en.
Why do we use im here instead of just in?
The word im is a contraction of in dem. When describing when something happens in a specific century or decade, German uses the dative case. Because Jahrhundert is a neuter noun, the dative word for "the" is dem. The words in and dem naturally squish together into im.
Is einundzwanzigsten really supposed to be written as one giant word?
Yes! In German, numbers less than one million are written as a single, continuous word without spaces or hyphens. So "one-and-twentieth" is perfectly correct as one long string of letters.
How can I easily remember that Jahrhundert is a neuter noun?
It is a compound noun made from das Jahr (the year) and das Hundert (the hundred). In German, the very last part of a compound word always dictates the gender of the whole word. Since it ends with the neuter word das Hundert, the whole word is neuter.
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