Stadt or statt?

b1

Pronounced alike, two different parts of speech: die Stadt is a place and is capitalised, statt is a preposition with the genitive meaning instead of. There is also the verb stattfinden, which contains the same statt.

die Stadt

A noun, hence capitalised, plural die Städte. It sits inside Stadtplan, Innenstadt, Hauptstadt.

Die Stadt hat eine schöne Altstadt.The city has a beautiful old town.

statt

A preposition with the genitive, the same as anstatt. Also a conjunction with zu: statt zu warten.

Statt eines Briefes kam eine E-Mail.Instead of a letter an email arrived.

The mistake

Wir treffen uns in der Statt.

Wir treffen uns in der Stadt.

After in der comes a noun, so it is die Stadt with a d. Statt cannot follow a preposition at all - it is one itself.

Rule of thumb

Can you substitute anstelle von? Then statt. Is there an article in front? Then Stadt.

Learn this with merke.me

Create a free account to practice this with spaced repetition and track your progress.

Start free

Not sure where you stand? Take the 3-minute placement test.

Get the German material

Short emails, only when there is something worth reading: false friends, idioms with their real origin, and the grammar people actually get wrong.

Double opt-in. Unsubscribe in one click, any time.

More comparisons