Breakdown of Jede kleine Verbesserung gibt uns neue Motivation.
Questions & Answers about Jede kleine Verbesserung gibt uns neue Motivation.
Jede has to agree with Verbesserung in gender, number, and case.
- Verbesserung is a feminine noun: die Verbesserung.
- In this sentence it is the subject, so it is in the nominative case.
- Nominative singular forms of jede are:
- masculine: jeder
- feminine: jede
- neuter: jedes
Because Verbesserung is feminine nominative singular, you need jede.
Adjective endings depend on:
- The gender, number, and case of the noun
- The type of word before the adjective (article/determiner)
Here:
- Noun: Verbesserung – feminine, singular, nominative
- Determiner: jede – a der-word (works like die/jede/jene)
- Pattern: After a der-word, adjectives usually take weak endings.
For feminine nominative singular after a der-word, the adjective ending is -e:
- jede kleine Verbesserung
So kleine is feminine nominative singular, weak declension. The -e happens to be the same ending you see in several other forms, but the rule behind it is “der-word + feminine nominative → -e”.
Jede itself functions as the determiner, so you do not add another article.
You can have:
- die Verbesserung (the improvement)
- eine Verbesserung (an improvement)
- jede Verbesserung (every improvement)
But you cannot stack them:
- ✗ die jede Verbesserung
- ✗ eine jede Verbesserung
German normally uses only one main determiner in front of a noun, and jede fills that role here.
Both are grammatically possible, but they differ in nuance.
gibt uns neue Motivation
= gives us new motivation (in general, as an abstract “amount” of motivation)gibt uns eine neue Motivation
= gives us a new kind of motivation / a new source of motivation
This sounds more like one distinct, specific “new motivation” among others.
Because Motivation is being treated like an uncountable abstract noun, neue Motivation without an article is more natural. It focuses on the quality/state (“more motivation”) rather than on counting motivations.
Again, look at gender, case, and what comes before the adjective.
- Motivation is feminine: die Motivation
- Here, Motivation is the direct object, so it is accusative singular feminine.
- There is no article in front of it (not eine or die), only the adjective neue.
Without an article, the adjective takes strong endings. For feminine accusative singular, the strong ending is also -e:
- neue Motivation
So both kleine and neue end in -e, but for different underlying reasons:
- kleine: weak ending after a der-word (jede)
- neue: strong ending with no article before the adjective
Wir and uns are different cases of the same pronoun.
- wir = nominative (subject form: we)
- uns = accusative or dative (object forms: us)
The verb geben (“to give”) typically uses this pattern:
- jemandem etwas geben
(to give someone something)
So the “someone” is in the dative case.
In the sentence:
- giver (subject, nominative): jede kleine Verbesserung
- receiver (indirect object, dative): uns
- thing given (direct object, accusative): neue Motivation
So the pronoun must be uns (dative), not wir.
Both orders are grammatically possible, but the neutral, most common order is:
- Verb
- Object pronouns
- Noun objects
So:
- gibt uns neue Motivation
(verb – pronoun – noun)
The alternative:
- gibt neue Motivation uns
is technically possible but sounds marked and less natural. It can be used for emphasis, e.g. highlighting neue Motivation first, but in everyday speech the pronoun uns normally comes before the full noun neue Motivation.
The verb must agree with the subject.
- Infinitive: geben (to give)
- Subject: jede kleine Verbesserung
→ core noun: Verbesserung (singular)
So the subject is 3rd person singular (“it” in English).
Present tense forms of geben:
- ich gebe
- du gibst
- er/sie/es gibt
- wir geben
- ihr gebt
- sie/Sie geben
For jede kleine Verbesserung (3rd person singular), the correct form is gibt.
In German, all nouns are capitalized, no matter where they occur in the sentence.
- Verbesserung = noun (“improvement”)
- Motivation = noun (“motivation”)
Adjectives like kleine and neue remain lowercase, unless they are part of a proper name or used as nouns (which they are not here).
You can form the plural Motivationen, but it sounds unusual in this context.
- neue Motivation treats motivation as a mass/abstract noun (like “energy”, “hope”, “courage”).
- Plural Motivationen suggests different distinct kinds or sources of motivation, which is rarer and more specific.
In a normal motivational sentence like this, native speakers almost always use the singular:
- Jede kleine Verbesserung gibt uns neue Motivation.
Yes, but the meaning and grammar change slightly.
jede kleine Verbesserung gibt uns neue Motivation
= every small improvement (considered one by one) gives us new motivation.
Focus: each individual improvement.alle kleinen Verbesserungen geben uns neue Motivation
= all small improvements (as a group) give us new motivation.
Focus: the whole collection of improvements.
Grammatically:
- jede kleine Verbesserung → singular subject → gibt
- alle kleinen Verbesserungen → plural subject → geben
Both are correct; the original sentence focuses on each improvement individually.
This is grammatically possible, but stylistically marked.
- Neue Motivation gibt uns jede kleine Verbesserung.
Here, Neue Motivation is moved to the start to emphasize the result. It sounds more poetic or rhetorical than neutral.
Standard, neutral word order keeps the subject first:
- Jede kleine Verbesserung gibt uns neue Motivation.
So the alternative is not wrong, but the original word order is what you would normally use in everyday speech and writing.