Way of track. German language question
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"
If only there was a logic... !
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
:wave: