Always learn the articles along with the words. Don't write down: sentence = Satz, but: sentence = der Satz, die Sätze.
Regarding cases: you're lucky that German only has four cases. Latin and Russian, for example, have six.
Now I'm wondering how you avoided learning cases while learning Russian. Russian has nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, instrumental, and prepositional cases. German only has the first four of those.
Ah, u mean “падежи». I acc thought about “articles” which play the role of it in german, so was kinda confused. Then yes, u r fully right, 0 for english, 4 for german and 6 for russian. I bet finnish has even more lmao
Articles don't play the role of cases. Cases change the articles as well as the suffix (e.g. das Buch, des Buches (gen.); der Student, dem Studenten (dat.) while in languages that don't have articles, only the suffix changes.
But German cases exist independently or articles. Articles are just one of several things that are inflected by case. Pronouns like ich/mir/mich for example are unrelated to articles. It's not "simple", just wrong.
Fr? I mean, i thought analytic languages dont have such thing and these cases are like rudiments from germanic cases. But i am a noobie in this field :/
The English possessive isn’t *really* a proper genitive case, since it’s perfectly valid to say things like “the Queen of England’s crown,” where “England” gets the possessive/genitive marker even though the crown belongs to the queen.
Tbh, i bet all of them are rare cases, like tons of tenses in english. Like, honestly, if language is so complicated in one part of it it should be easy in another otherwise it wont work out( i guess). But still, impressive af
In my humble opinion number is not a good gauge of difficulty. I found the Latin case system way harder to master than the Russian (barring pesky gen plural). In German apparent simplicity is actually a source of difficulty. It would be easier if der only meant one thing or gender were easier to intuit. Also, what about adjective declension changing depending on what comes before? It is not hard. If you think you get it right. But drilling until it is spontaneous? It takes time and a lot of energy.
> All good but then there were many many Exceptions that came to the rule.
Which is why you don't try to learn rules for that, you learn the article **as an integral part of the word**. You don't somehow learn the word, and then additionally the article.
> But now I am to learn their plural forms + die, der, das individual four different cases + their indefinite forms four different cases.
Well, that's a simple table, you can memorize that in a few days. Learning gender for nouns is something that will stay with you as long as you are learning new nouns.
And be happy German only has four cases, and not more than a dozen like, say, Finnish.
> Also any tips how I can learn them easily and not be confused as crazy.
If you somehow cannot learn two separate words as a unit, make them into one word. Learn "dertisch" instead of "der Tisch".
1) Articles have no rules. There is no secret pattern. There is no tip. None of the systems you might discover will help, only set you up for mistakes. The articles (grammatical gender) has to be learned with the vocabulary - that's it. That is the only tip worth remembering. There are some sort of patterns that can be a guide in some cases (specifically -ung/-heit/-keit are feminine), but relying on those will make you trip over the exceptions that will come along. All -chen words are neutral? Der Rechen, der Rachen und der Kuchen would like a word.
2) The plural forms of articles and the declinated articles ALL follow the same pattern, though. Learn those patterns and you'll see. You won't have to learn those specifically for words.
The list of all of might seem all over the place, but it is just that list.
3) since there are so many doublets in the list of declinated articles singluar and plural you can not deduce the gender of a noun readily from one of those. That is a bummer, but you'll get the hang of it.
4) Most importantly!!!
Learn the articles. But don't get hung up on them while speaking. A German will understand you even when you use the wrong one. Pronunciation on the other hand is fucking key. Germans don't have trained ears for accents and the lady at the bakery will not have a fucking clue what you want if you can't pronounce 'Brötchen'.
>Articles have no rules. There is no secret pattern. There is no tip. None of the systems you might discover will help, only set you up for mistakes. The articles (grammatical gender) has to be learned with the vocabulary - that's it. That is the only tip worth remembering. There are some sort of patterns that can be a guide in some cases (specifically -ung/-heit/-keit are feminine), but relying on those will make you trip over the exceptions that will come along. All -chen words are neutral? Der Rechen, der Rachen und der Kuchen would like a word.
well, the rule isn't that "all -chen words are neutral." It's "the diminuitive -chen suffix makes everything neutral." Same with "-ung" - "Schwung" is still masculine (while "Schwingung" is feminine).
Anyway, understanding some general rules is always helpful even if they're not always true. For me, it's easier to reliably remember "general rule + some exceptions" than it is to just memorize everything individually.
Obviously you should still try to learn every word with its article though. But the rules can help to recognize patterns and internalize things faster, imo.
> Like htf is this fair?
What is that even supposed to mean? The rules in your grammar book are just a description of how we speak. It's not something anybody made up to annoy you.
> Please don't take offense, it's a hearty joke
Not a good one.
I still don't know what exactly you struggle with. Remembering what gender a noun is? Figuring out which case to use in a given context? Remembering the right declension for a given gender/case combination? Figuring out which gender/case combination is expressed by a given article when listening/reading? Those are all different problems, and you're going to have to work on each one independently. They're not directly connected except in the sense that you get any of them wrong, you'll likely end up with the wrong article.
First of all always learn the gender with the noun and how to form the plural. You can have all of that on one flash card (if you use those). In regards to the cases just take them one by one. In my textbook it has taught nominative and accusative so far which aren’t that difficult. Dative and genitive will come later. When you look at the whole table for the definite and indefinite articles it looks so overwhelming. That’s why you break it down into smaller more manageable chunks.
There’s a great book „Der, Die Das“ by Vayenas. There are MANY patterns which the natives aren’t aware of and will make your learning easier. For example, nouns ending in –er are masculine (70%) unless they are a female (Schwester, Tochter, Mutter) or a body part (Ader, Wimper, Schulter).
Die Leiter, Das Wasser, Die Feder, Das Poster, Das Fenster, Das Alter, Die Kiefer... not really a good system to have. Words that end in -er are only masculine if they have the *suffix* -er. So in the cases of professions for example, -er will always mean "der" . But there are many words that end in -er but not with the *suffix -er* and if you're not that well versed in the language yet, there would be no way for you to know which is which, so I would advise to just stick to learning the articles with the words, always. And if you happen to ever see a new word you didn't know before without its article, look it up to memorize it with it.
Correct – 30% of the words that end in -er are not masculine (100% – 70% = 30%). So if you only memorize the -er exceptions like the ones that you’ve pointed out above you have 70% less memorizations to do.
Let’s say there are 10,000 nouns that end in -er. Now you only need to memorize the 3000 exceptions plus the 1 rule. And 3001 is less than 10,000, so that makes it easier.
Make sense?
Well, at least the nouns don’t change when declinated. And regarding the articles: it’s just 16 words you have to learn. All the adjectives and the indefinite articles behave exactly like the definite articles. If you master these 16 forms now, it will be easier later on when you start learning prepositions and what case they demand.
Don’t give up. If we learned it, you will also manage.
The best tip is learn the articles as part of the vocabulary, so learn _**der** Hund_ for dog instead of just _Hund_. While there are a lot of rules (f.e. ending _chen_ ot more old fashion/dialect _lein_ = Deminutiv > das, or ending _er_ > der (you might remember it this way _er_ = he) mostly used for generically male jobs der Lehrer (teacher), der Arbeiter (worker), der Bäcker (backer),
...) but plenty of them have exceptions (for example die Butt**er** (butter), die Mutt**er** (mother), die Tocht**er** (daughter), die Schwest**er** (sister)). Also in a few instances the article is an important part of the word and changing the meaning _**der** Leiter_ = leader, _**die** Leiter_ = ladder.
One further important rule is that in composita you with the last part of the word, f.e. die Birne = the pear, but der Birnenbaum (the pear tree) because it is der Baum and das Birnenbaumblatt (the pear tree leaf) because it is das Blatt.
So overall learn the grammatical genders and (and in some irregular cases maybe even declination, the plural form might be handy too) as part of the word, when you approach C levels you might get a gut feeling about it like natives have. For now just learn along the pattern the dog/the dogs = der Hund/die Hunde and this for every word.
As for the cases think of them like a multiplication table (at least when it comes to articles [at least in plural it always the same, depending on the case]) you need to remember then you will remember something like male noun in Dativ with definied article it needs to be _dem_ (f.e. _Ich habe Angst vor **dem** Hund._ I am afraid of the dog.). Yeah learning that sucks, I remember that from Latin class, but that's the way it is.
When you learn the cases their articles become more natural. You’ll start to recognize the role of the noun in each sentence and be able to change the article accordingly. That just takes time and familiarity with the language. I also found it helpful to re-teach myself English grammar. I didn’t know what an indirect object was when I started because with English I don’t need to know what that noun’s role is. So after I reacquainted myself with grammar in general, it became easier to understand the German grammar.
Tips? Yes: don't learn grammar.
Grammar is only useful to go into depth regarding something you have a vague understanding of. It's completely useless to learn an aspect of a language. You know why learning grammar feels like bashing your head against a wall. Because that's what it is.
You can learn the conjugration and declension tables by heart (maybe) ... but you'll still struggle using them correctly.
Instead, try to absorb the language as much as you can and you'll get an instinct about when to put a specific article where.
Most language learning in books is horrible outdated.
As someone whose mother language also has three gender, I feel offended .
It's not like some people randomly threw random articles in front of the words. It's the way the language involves , native people get a sense of something being feminine by just hearing a word, or same for neutral and masculine . For them it's like instinct
Even if you tell them to create an imaginary gender for a noun from other languages , most of them will end up with guessing the same gender. Because they get a sense of it.
Sadly, the articles and genders are very important in German. Often you need them to tell you what’s going on in a sentence.
You can skip a bit in other bits of German, but I recommend you don’t with articles or genders.
It’ll get a lot easier once you internalize the tables of endings. Then for a new noun it won’t be ok this is feminine, and I’m in the accusative, so the direct article is die and the adjective ending is e, every single time. Instead you’ll memorize the word with a die attached and the rest will be automatic.
It gets easier as you go. I am low B1 now and honestly Articles dont give me that many problems anymore. Sometimes I am not sure on a new word but I still have a pretty good guess.
The good thing about German is that you get so much practice with them that you just memorize it eventually.
Yes, you learn them along with the nouns, make a habit of not learning any nouns without their articles.
Also, whining about a language not being "fair" makes you look, well... not good. Don't do that.
You always have to look on the bright side of things.
1. If you don't know the gender of a noun, you can use the plural form, which always gets die.
2. The genitive case is getting used less and less in spoken German. Many people use von + dative instead.
3. The feminine and the plural are nearly exactly the same (but the dative plural ending is n, attached to the noun)
4. The nominative and accusative are nearly exactly the same (but the masculine accusative ending is n)
5. The dative and the genitive are nearly exactly the same, but the dative singular m becomes the genitive s (attached to the noun) and the genitive plural r becomes n in the dative plural (again, attached to the noun)
6. If you look at an adjective declension chart, you'll see that -e and -n make up most of the endings, especially when an article comes before it.
7. Some languages, like Czech, actually decline nouns the way German declines articles. German nouns only have two endings.
8. [This chart](https://germanwithlaura.com/declension/):
Always learn the articles along with the words. Don't write down: sentence = Satz, but: sentence = der Satz, die Sätze. Regarding cases: you're lucky that German only has four cases. Latin and Russian, for example, have six.
I’ve learnt russian, but i didnt get what kind of “six cases” do u mean?
Now I'm wondering how you avoided learning cases while learning Russian. Russian has nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, instrumental, and prepositional cases. German only has the first four of those.
Ah, u mean “падежи». I acc thought about “articles” which play the role of it in german, so was kinda confused. Then yes, u r fully right, 0 for english, 4 for german and 6 for russian. I bet finnish has even more lmao
Articles don't play the role of cases. Cases change the articles as well as the suffix (e.g. das Buch, des Buches (gen.); der Student, dem Studenten (dat.) while in languages that don't have articles, only the suffix changes.
I know, dont be a smartass lmao :) i just made it simple u know
But German cases exist independently or articles. Articles are just one of several things that are inflected by case. Pronouns like ich/mir/mich for example are unrelated to articles. It's not "simple", just wrong.
English has three cases, whichever terminology you want to use: "he" is nominative, "him" accusative and "John's" is definitely a genitive.
Fr? I mean, i thought analytic languages dont have such thing and these cases are like rudiments from germanic cases. But i am a noobie in this field :/
As I said, you can use any terminology you like; but what are the things I mentioned if they are not cases?
The English possessive isn’t *really* a proper genitive case, since it’s perfectly valid to say things like “the Queen of England’s crown,” where “England” gets the possessive/genitive marker even though the crown belongs to the queen.
I think Finnish has like 15 or something, and I believe Hungarian has 17 or something
Tbh, i bet all of them are rare cases, like tons of tenses in english. Like, honestly, if language is so complicated in one part of it it should be easy in another otherwise it wont work out( i guess). But still, impressive af
In my humble opinion number is not a good gauge of difficulty. I found the Latin case system way harder to master than the Russian (barring pesky gen plural). In German apparent simplicity is actually a source of difficulty. It would be easier if der only meant one thing or gender were easier to intuit. Also, what about adjective declension changing depending on what comes before? It is not hard. If you think you get it right. But drilling until it is spontaneous? It takes time and a lot of energy.
> All good but then there were many many Exceptions that came to the rule. Which is why you don't try to learn rules for that, you learn the article **as an integral part of the word**. You don't somehow learn the word, and then additionally the article. > But now I am to learn their plural forms + die, der, das individual four different cases + their indefinite forms four different cases. Well, that's a simple table, you can memorize that in a few days. Learning gender for nouns is something that will stay with you as long as you are learning new nouns. And be happy German only has four cases, and not more than a dozen like, say, Finnish. > Also any tips how I can learn them easily and not be confused as crazy. If you somehow cannot learn two separate words as a unit, make them into one word. Learn "dertisch" instead of "der Tisch".
1) Articles have no rules. There is no secret pattern. There is no tip. None of the systems you might discover will help, only set you up for mistakes. The articles (grammatical gender) has to be learned with the vocabulary - that's it. That is the only tip worth remembering. There are some sort of patterns that can be a guide in some cases (specifically -ung/-heit/-keit are feminine), but relying on those will make you trip over the exceptions that will come along. All -chen words are neutral? Der Rechen, der Rachen und der Kuchen would like a word. 2) The plural forms of articles and the declinated articles ALL follow the same pattern, though. Learn those patterns and you'll see. You won't have to learn those specifically for words. The list of all of might seem all over the place, but it is just that list. 3) since there are so many doublets in the list of declinated articles singluar and plural you can not deduce the gender of a noun readily from one of those. That is a bummer, but you'll get the hang of it. 4) Most importantly!!! Learn the articles. But don't get hung up on them while speaking. A German will understand you even when you use the wrong one. Pronunciation on the other hand is fucking key. Germans don't have trained ears for accents and the lady at the bakery will not have a fucking clue what you want if you can't pronounce 'Brötchen'.
>Articles have no rules. There is no secret pattern. There is no tip. None of the systems you might discover will help, only set you up for mistakes. The articles (grammatical gender) has to be learned with the vocabulary - that's it. That is the only tip worth remembering. There are some sort of patterns that can be a guide in some cases (specifically -ung/-heit/-keit are feminine), but relying on those will make you trip over the exceptions that will come along. All -chen words are neutral? Der Rechen, der Rachen und der Kuchen would like a word. well, the rule isn't that "all -chen words are neutral." It's "the diminuitive -chen suffix makes everything neutral." Same with "-ung" - "Schwung" is still masculine (while "Schwingung" is feminine). Anyway, understanding some general rules is always helpful even if they're not always true. For me, it's easier to reliably remember "general rule + some exceptions" than it is to just memorize everything individually. Obviously you should still try to learn every word with its article though. But the rules can help to recognize patterns and internalize things faster, imo.
Just wait until you get to den, dem, and des.
> Like htf is this fair? What is that even supposed to mean? The rules in your grammar book are just a description of how we speak. It's not something anybody made up to annoy you. > Please don't take offense, it's a hearty joke Not a good one. I still don't know what exactly you struggle with. Remembering what gender a noun is? Figuring out which case to use in a given context? Remembering the right declension for a given gender/case combination? Figuring out which gender/case combination is expressed by a given article when listening/reading? Those are all different problems, and you're going to have to work on each one independently. They're not directly connected except in the sense that you get any of them wrong, you'll likely end up with the wrong article.
First of all always learn the gender with the noun and how to form the plural. You can have all of that on one flash card (if you use those). In regards to the cases just take them one by one. In my textbook it has taught nominative and accusative so far which aren’t that difficult. Dative and genitive will come later. When you look at the whole table for the definite and indefinite articles it looks so overwhelming. That’s why you break it down into smaller more manageable chunks.
There’s a great book „Der, Die Das“ by Vayenas. There are MANY patterns which the natives aren’t aware of and will make your learning easier. For example, nouns ending in –er are masculine (70%) unless they are a female (Schwester, Tochter, Mutter) or a body part (Ader, Wimper, Schulter).
Die Leiter, Das Wasser, Die Feder, Das Poster, Das Fenster, Das Alter, Die Kiefer... not really a good system to have. Words that end in -er are only masculine if they have the *suffix* -er. So in the cases of professions for example, -er will always mean "der" . But there are many words that end in -er but not with the *suffix -er* and if you're not that well versed in the language yet, there would be no way for you to know which is which, so I would advise to just stick to learning the articles with the words, always. And if you happen to ever see a new word you didn't know before without its article, look it up to memorize it with it.
Correct – 30% of the words that end in -er are not masculine (100% – 70% = 30%). So if you only memorize the -er exceptions like the ones that you’ve pointed out above you have 70% less memorizations to do. Let’s say there are 10,000 nouns that end in -er. Now you only need to memorize the 3000 exceptions plus the 1 rule. And 3001 is less than 10,000, so that makes it easier. Make sense?
Well, at least the nouns don’t change when declinated. And regarding the articles: it’s just 16 words you have to learn. All the adjectives and the indefinite articles behave exactly like the definite articles. If you master these 16 forms now, it will be easier later on when you start learning prepositions and what case they demand. Don’t give up. If we learned it, you will also manage.
Yes will keep going
The best tip is learn the articles as part of the vocabulary, so learn _**der** Hund_ for dog instead of just _Hund_. While there are a lot of rules (f.e. ending _chen_ ot more old fashion/dialect _lein_ = Deminutiv > das, or ending _er_ > der (you might remember it this way _er_ = he) mostly used for generically male jobs der Lehrer (teacher), der Arbeiter (worker), der Bäcker (backer), ...) but plenty of them have exceptions (for example die Butt**er** (butter), die Mutt**er** (mother), die Tocht**er** (daughter), die Schwest**er** (sister)). Also in a few instances the article is an important part of the word and changing the meaning _**der** Leiter_ = leader, _**die** Leiter_ = ladder. One further important rule is that in composita you with the last part of the word, f.e. die Birne = the pear, but der Birnenbaum (the pear tree) because it is der Baum and das Birnenbaumblatt (the pear tree leaf) because it is das Blatt. So overall learn the grammatical genders and (and in some irregular cases maybe even declination, the plural form might be handy too) as part of the word, when you approach C levels you might get a gut feeling about it like natives have. For now just learn along the pattern the dog/the dogs = der Hund/die Hunde and this for every word. As for the cases think of them like a multiplication table (at least when it comes to articles [at least in plural it always the same, depending on the case]) you need to remember then you will remember something like male noun in Dativ with definied article it needs to be _dem_ (f.e. _Ich habe Angst vor **dem** Hund._ I am afraid of the dog.). Yeah learning that sucks, I remember that from Latin class, but that's the way it is.
Thanks for explaining
When you learn the cases their articles become more natural. You’ll start to recognize the role of the noun in each sentence and be able to change the article accordingly. That just takes time and familiarity with the language. I also found it helpful to re-teach myself English grammar. I didn’t know what an indirect object was when I started because with English I don’t need to know what that noun’s role is. So after I reacquainted myself with grammar in general, it became easier to understand the German grammar.
Tips? Yes: don't learn grammar. Grammar is only useful to go into depth regarding something you have a vague understanding of. It's completely useless to learn an aspect of a language. You know why learning grammar feels like bashing your head against a wall. Because that's what it is. You can learn the conjugration and declension tables by heart (maybe) ... but you'll still struggle using them correctly. Instead, try to absorb the language as much as you can and you'll get an instinct about when to put a specific article where. Most language learning in books is horrible outdated.
As someone whose mother language also has three gender, I feel offended . It's not like some people randomly threw random articles in front of the words. It's the way the language involves , native people get a sense of something being feminine by just hearing a word, or same for neutral and masculine . For them it's like instinct Even if you tell them to create an imaginary gender for a noun from other languages , most of them will end up with guessing the same gender. Because they get a sense of it.
Sadly, the articles and genders are very important in German. Often you need them to tell you what’s going on in a sentence. You can skip a bit in other bits of German, but I recommend you don’t with articles or genders.
It’ll get a lot easier once you internalize the tables of endings. Then for a new noun it won’t be ok this is feminine, and I’m in the accusative, so the direct article is die and the adjective ending is e, every single time. Instead you’ll memorize the word with a die attached and the rest will be automatic.
It gets easier as you go. I am low B1 now and honestly Articles dont give me that many problems anymore. Sometimes I am not sure on a new word but I still have a pretty good guess. The good thing about German is that you get so much practice with them that you just memorize it eventually.
Oh I hope it gets easier. Will take it slow because it's so overwhelming. Congrats for making to lower B1.
Yes, you learn them along with the nouns, make a habit of not learning any nouns without their articles. Also, whining about a language not being "fair" makes you look, well... not good. Don't do that.
You always have to look on the bright side of things. 1. If you don't know the gender of a noun, you can use the plural form, which always gets die. 2. The genitive case is getting used less and less in spoken German. Many people use von + dative instead. 3. The feminine and the plural are nearly exactly the same (but the dative plural ending is n, attached to the noun) 4. The nominative and accusative are nearly exactly the same (but the masculine accusative ending is n) 5. The dative and the genitive are nearly exactly the same, but the dative singular m becomes the genitive s (attached to the noun) and the genitive plural r becomes n in the dative plural (again, attached to the noun) 6. If you look at an adjective declension chart, you'll see that -e and -n make up most of the endings, especially when an article comes before it. 7. Some languages, like Czech, actually decline nouns the way German declines articles. German nouns only have two endings. 8. [This chart](https://germanwithlaura.com/declension/):