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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"
Why not PM Gunner with that one???(Ulrich) Or maybe Patrick Chadwick in the Advisory Panel, he lives in Germany.
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.
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:
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."
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) :lol:
~ Harlan
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!!
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:madsmile::surrender:
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.:wave:
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.
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....
Man,
Thai is probably my best language, learned on the spot. There is no gender in that language, whatever. What they got instead is pronouns and forms of address that indicate social status relationships.
My wife will use he, she, it indiscriminately, but she mostly likes "she" for a pronoun. She has learned ho to streamline the English language in a way that I find useful as well.
Gnner, thanks for coming in on this thread.
jn
I was going to college in the 90's and thought it would be cool for a fellow with the last name of Wolfe to speak a little German. According to testing in the AF, I didn't have much of an aptitude for foreign languages. They were right, didn't take me long to drop that class!
Try the Langenscheidt´s version. It contains 2 Cd´s and a book for around $20. They have an dealer at the USA so no prblem to get the Material.Quote:
Originally Posted by A. F Medic
Langenscheidt: German Instruction, school, textbooks, self study, dictionaries
---------- Post added at 02:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:11 PM ----------
You´re welcome, Jon!
many years ago a friend of mine jumped in the back of a cab, and said something like "die bahnhof, bitte". "Das bahnhof" said the driver firmly, and set off.
Wow, than your friend met exactly the only friendly cab driver we have!:rolleyes:
Well, there you go then. Most taxi drivers here in Deutschland are foreign and don´t know their *rse from their elbow. It´s DER Bahnhof!! It´s taken me more then a decade to learn some of them but the general rule is that der is masculine, die is feminine and das is neuter. But a large number of inanimate objects are considered to be masculine or feminine and Mädchen (girl) is neuter (as are all diminutive forms ending in -chen) as they´re considered to be "small". And so the list of exceptions to the rule goes on and on ... and on.
But it doesn´t really matter as Germans are generally well pleased that they know the rules and we don´t. Unlike the (*§!*#) French, they love you to try, however wrong your attempt may be.
No-wonder you struggled, WOLFE with the 'e' is English or maybe Anglo-Irish.( Unless you know of specific German roots). Wolf could be British or German or Jewish, but put the 'e' on the end and that plonks you well into ye olde worlde Bretayne.Quote:
Originally Posted by andiarisaka
Perhaps you have a distant link with Major-General James P. Wolfe ?
And I thought Americanized English had most of the crazy rules. But then again it's a language made up of words from all the other languages and some we made up all on our own. So throw a Louisiana Cajun, A Minnesota Scandnavian, A Boston man, and a New Mexico cowboy and a California Valley girl into a conversation and watch the fun:rofl::dancingbanana::madsmile:
Anyone who is familar with that eminent Glaswegian philosopher Rab. C. Nesbitt knows that all the above-mentioned speak Standard English (wossat?) by comparison!
:wave:
Quote:
Originally Posted by TDH
Not so. In the matter of spelling, American English is often more rational: color, honor etc without the irritating redundant "u" introduced by British Francophiles. But there is one noteworthy exception. Americans are shy of the word arse (from Germanic "Arsch"), which is odd, considering the substantial numbers of settlers of German origins. An *** is an animal, a.k.a. donkey. The story of Baalam's *** was not about Baalam's posterior, but about his donkey. So the quaint old American invitation to kiss one's *** fails for the simple reason that we no longer have donkeys. But it is good to know that the folks on the West side of the pond are such animal lovers! And note that the forum software is not bothered by the word arse, but has replaced the word a-s-s- by ***. I wrote it as ***.
Otherwise, I favor those American spellings that move the English language just a wee bit in the direction of phonetic rationalisation. But I draw the line at thru!
:wave:
Thanks, Patrick! Learned something new!:bow::wave:Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Chadwick
Schimpfesle, "Americanized" some 150 years ago to Shimfessel. An elderly Austrian lady sorted this out for me a few years back during a search for "history". I spent only two years in Germany in the early 70s but I loved the complexity of the language. Dutch seems easier to understand for some reason but I speak neither German nor Dutch with any fluency.
Don´t find any with this name, but Schimpfle is an common name in Bavaria. And the best, there is a brewery with that name closer to me!Quote:
Originally Posted by old crow
The German I learned in 1980 when I chased love from Frankfurt down to Lisbon:
"schmeisse der americanische arschlocken raus!"
thank god for trains! Got us out of the country ahead of the police.
This weekend, the illegals came by my house selling tamales. I bought a dozen. The man saw my black Crown Vic with the spotlight and asked "Su es policia?"
"No, es carro policia" and I added "Dat carro se vende"
"Cundo?"
"Dos mil dollares"
Then the ife asked "Cual ano"
I said "To thousand two"
She asked "Dos mil dos?"
"Si, dos mil dos"
Later I thought about it. At 12 for ten dollars, I think i just sold my Crown Vic for 2400 tamales.
jn
Jon, think about that deal. In my opinion it isn´t OK without a bottle Mescal included. You will need it after the 2400 tamales!:madsmile::rofl:
2400 tamales and 6 bottlesof mescal ...u-u-uu-r-r-ppp.
:rofl::rofl::rofl: Jon, i´m sure that mixture isn´t to find on any health plan but it will make the bacterias stay away from you! Don´t know if it is for the Alcohol or the smelling!!! LOLQuote:
Originally Posted by jon_norstog
If those 6 bottles of Mescal each have 2 worms you won't care what the tamales taste like.