Word
Der fünfzigste Jahrestag war toll.
Meaning
The 50th anniversary was great.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Der fünfzigste Jahrestag war toll.
sein
to be
toll
great
der Jahrestag
the anniversary
fünfzigste
fiftieth
Questions & Answers about Der fünfzigste Jahrestag war toll.
How do you form the word fünfzigste (50th)?
For numbers 20 and up, you add -st to the end of the number, followed by an adjective ending. So fünfzig (fifty) becomes fünfzigst-. (Remember that numbers under 20 usually just add -t, like der fünfte for 'the 5th').
Why does fünfzigste end in -e instead of -en?
Ordinal numbers take the exact same endings as adjectives! Here, der fünfzigste Jahrestag is the subject of the sentence (nominative case). After a 'der-word', the masculine nominative ending is just -e. If it were in the dative case (like 'on the 50th anniversary'), it would change to am fünfzigsten Jahrestag.
How is the compound noun Jahrestag put together?
It combines das Jahr (the year) and der Tag (the day). The -es- in the middle is a linking sound used to glue certain nouns together smoothly. As always with compound nouns, the last word determines the gender, which is why it is masculine (der).
Why use the simple past war here instead of the spoken past tense (Perfekt)?