Heurigen

Hi,

I have just seen this sentence:

"In Österreich sind im heurigen Mai weniger Menschen arbeitslos gewesen als im Mai 2018"

I understand that "heurigen" means this years and is written "heurig" in its basic form.

When should you add "en" to the end?

It looks like the declension of adjectives to me.
https://deutsch.lingolia.com/en/grammar/adjectives/declension

Hallo RexV und sfpugh,

You are right sfpugh, when an adjective is placed before a noun (which is the case in the sentence above), its ending needs to be changed to match the gender, number and case of the noun, e.g. das neue Auto - “the new car“. 

When the adjective comes after the noun, e.g. das Auto ist neu - “the car is new“, the adjective is not declined. 

The reason “en“ needs to be added here is because the adjective heurig is placed before the noun Mai (which is masculine, singular and dative). 

You can learn more about the declension of adjectives in the dative in lesson 10.8: Adjective Endings.

Viele Grüße
Julia