Hello friends,
good mood and warm weather I wish to you. This day we will pay attention to the notable German expression “Es gibt“.
Meanwhile in English we have “there is” and “there are“, in German language it is simply “Es gibt”.
One important thing to notice is, that this word combination requires Akkusativ, e.g. all nouns need to be conjugated accordingly. If we need to put any article or add adjective before the noun, we should use Akkusativ case as well.
So, lets consider following examples for our skills improvement.
Practical examples
- Es gibt einen alten Mann. – There is an old man.
- In diesem Zimmer gibt es einen Stuhl und einen Tisch. – There is one chair and one table in this room.
- Es gibt ein kleines Mädchen. – There is a little girl.
- Es gibt einen Bruder und eine Schwester. – There is a brother and a sister.
- Es gibt eine Großmutter und einen Großvater. – There is a grandmother and a grandfather.
- Auf der Straße gibt es viele Menschen. – There are many people on the street.
In this sentence “viele” (adjective) represents countable plural nouns: viele Bücher, Kinder, etc.
- Es gibt drei Tomaten und fünf Gurken auf dem Tisch. – There are three tomatoes and five cucumbers on the table.
Attention: when we specify the quantity (as numerals) of some products, we never adjust the numerals in Akkusativ, but nouns only: drei Gurken, sieben Tassen, zwei Lampen.
We can also put “es gibt” somewhere in the middle, not at the beginning. That also makes our communication style better. Here is the difference.
- Es gibt erfahrene Mitarbeiter (plural) in dieser Firma. – There are experienced employees (plural) in this company.
- In dieser Firma gibt es erfahrene Mitarbeiter. -> Same meaning, only the sentence is modified.
Attention: when “es gibt” stands somewhere in the middle, we get “reverse order”, e.g. “…gibt es…”. For instance: Normalerweise gibt es freie Parkplätze dort. – There are normally free parking spaces over there.
Negation:
We may also find expression in negation context with negation words “nein” and “kein“.
- Es gibt keinen Kaffee mehr. – There is no more coffee.
- Hier gibt es nicht genug Platz. – There isn’t enough space here.
Es gibt with other tenses:
This expression is mostly utilized in the present tense. In other tenses, we can use “Es gab” (Präteritum) or “Es hat gegeben” (Perfekt, rarely used):
- Früher gab es hier großes Haus. (Präteritum) – Before there was a large house here.
- Es gab ein starkes Gewitter in der Nacht. – There was a severe thunderstorm at night.
- Es hat gestern starken Regen gegeben. – There has been heavy rain yesterday.
Asking questions
Finally, when we need to ask someone using “es gibt”, the reverse order is applied, meaning “Gibt es…?” or “Gab es…?” in Präteritum.
- Gibt es hier jemanden, der gut Deutsch spricht? – Is there anyone here who speaks German well?
- Gibt es hier noch einen Stuhl für mich? – Is there a chair for me here?
- Gab es eine große Überraschung als du deinen Nachbar in Berlin getroffen hat? – Was there big surprise once you met your neighbor in Berlin?
With that we have reached the end of the current article, my dear friends. Learn German problemlos and enjoy the process. Besser spät als nie. I hope you got it right.
Other articles to look into:
Verb machen – practical examples
Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen in practice
Learn German with Greek kitchen
