Way of track. German language question

[A. F Medic]

As I have a strong German background, I invested in a total immersion German course so I could write it and speak it at least at the second grade level.

My question is, "When does one use Die,Das, and Der? Keep it simple please. ICH VERSTEHE DAS NICHT. Vielen Dank"

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[browningautorifle]

Why not PM Gunner with that one???(Ulrich) Or maybe Patrick Chadwick in the Advisory Panel, he lives in Germany.

[Harlan (Deceased)]

In singular they are particular for each noun. Der, Die, Das for masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns.
I took German in high school and all through college but they never really made sense to me and figured you just mostly had to memorize which one for each.

Funny, but I was discussing this very thing with Ulrich (Gunner) just recently.

[Patrick Chadwick]

Yeah, well if anyone can find the universal answer, I'd be delighted to know the trick. You just have to learn each one off by heart. And the important thing is to realise that the grammatical gender has nothing to do with sex as we know it!

Many years ago I read a newspaper report in which a supervisor was being tried for sexual assault on an apprentice. As the supervisor was accused of attempting to rape "den Lehrling" (accusative form of "der Lehrling" - the apprentice - masculine), the reader naturally assumes that a homosexual attack was involved. Several lines later, one reads that "das Mädchen" had made a corresponding deposition with regard to the assault. Only then does the penny drop that it was not in fact a homosexual assault. "Das Mädchen" - the girl - is grammatically neutral, in spite of the fact that the victim was female. The diminutive ending "-chen" demands the neuter grammatical form, regardless. So this grammatical peculiarity, especially when embedded in that kind of paragraph-long interminably convoluted German sentence sometimes to be found in newspaper reports, can leave you in some doubt as to who is doing what to whom!

If you find all this quite natural, then German is your native language. Myself, I am still baffled after 40 years!

Maybe "Gunner" Ulrich has a magic formula to work it out?

Patrick

[Bob Womack]

Yep. Gender is a language-assigned rather than meaning-assigned item in German. We talk of a ship as "she." In German it is masculine, "Der Schiff."

[Harlan (Deceased)]

Patrick,

Ulrich hasn't given me any magic formula and he told me nearly the same as what you said -
You just have to learn which word to use for each.

(I get the impression he feels that my correct usage of Der, Die, und Das are the least of my Deutsch problems)

~ Harlan

[A. F Medic]

I had an inkling that Die,Das, Der, were assigned to words. I needed the people here to confirm that. Thanks so much!

What I am trying to be taught now is/are the words most tourists use. Plane, train, beach, shower etc. The German word for sorry, I just can't remember . Entschuldigung!!!

Then the course moves on to colors, food, body parts, etc. I am trying, but I am using parts of my brain that I have not used since I retired!!

[gunner]

Thats indeed a strange thing. Normaly we say "Der" to male words like: der Baum, der Mann.
The word "Die" is in front of female words like: Die Frau, die Katze. And at least "Das" in front of neutral things like: das Motorrad, das Schiff. But.... sometimes we have special cases like Patrick said: das Mädchen and than words can change from singular like: der Mann to plural: die Männer but there is no way to say: das Mann, except you make a very little man out of him than he is. das Männchen! Now i made you complete mad
Thats the reason why a lot of german schoolkids are jealous of your "the"! And if you copy all the german words and translate it with Google you will get always the word "the" in front of them. So if you have any special questions than feel free to PM me and i´ll try to translate it.

[Harlan (Deceased)]

That clears it right up Ulrich -
All we need to do is figure out how to roll those nouns over on their back so we can see if they're male, female, or neutered

A.F.Medic,
The ancient course I took the first year of college was built around a scenario where a group of American college age kids were traveling to Germany and learning Deutsch. It would have fit right in with what you are trying to do.
It's funny but after 30 years I still remember, "Herr Ober, ein Bier bitte" from the dialogue in the book and not much else in particular. (Priorities)
Seriously, I checked out tapes from the German lab and played them over and over in my car on the long drive to and from school every day and it helped more than anything. To date myself, I was cutting edge because I had a Blaupunkt cassette tape player in my old Audi 100. The tape player was probably worth about as much as the car was at the time, but everything had to be German.

[A. F Medic]

As Borders is going out of business I had a chance to pick up three CDs by by Instant Immersion. Looked at Rosetta Stone but that was $500.00. With that you get to talk with people who allready speak the laguage.

I committed to give this a try and now are moving to cultery and food. Some are easy like bread or Das Brot. Thanks for the prior tips as those were not covered at all. If I would have a complaint, it would be on how well must you know the lesson before you move on.

They say six months to learn. Many Pa,. Dutch go to the auctions here but their language is a mixture of Dutch and a different style of German. The kids must learn their native language first (to 2nd grade) and the English....