On our second or third language lesson, our teacher gave us a book by Mark Twain called "The Awful German Language" - and now I am living it. My German lesson today covered a part of the German Grammar that Twain also found frustrating, so I want to capture some of it for you.
Nouns in German have genders - something which is foreign to us native English speakers. As an example, let's talk about a table. In German, "the table" happens to be masculine - der Tisch.
So, now if I told you that the German word for "on" can be translated as "auf" (sometimes), how would you think you would say "on the table"? If you chose auf der Tisch you would be unfortunately wrong. If a book was currently lying on the table, it would be auf dem Tisch.
That's all well and good, unless I want you to take something and put it on the table for me. Then I would have to instruct you to put the thing auf den Tisch.
Confused yet? Unfortunately that isn't the end of it either. If I had a chair (der Stuhl) that belonged to the table, then it becomes der Stuhl des Tisch, or even der Stuhl von dem Tisch.
A little confusing, huh?
Tschüß,
'Brush
PS: That being said, I am enjoying learning this language. The cool thing is, if I get it wrong then nobody really cares - they still understand you. But, if I get it right, then you get a lot of really impressed looks and stuff. :)
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3 comments:
Heheh.. you've not only run into the masculine/feminine problem with inanimate objects, but what you're hitting there with the den/des/dem business is noun declesions!
I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to study Latin and Greek; both of which have this declension thing going on and have participles that change depending upon whether the noun is nominative (the subject of the sentence), accusative (the object of the sentence) or dative or genetive or ablative (forget precisely what all those terms are for, but they are useful).
I'm sure you'll pick it up eventually; be thankful the endings on words aren't changing -- that's what they do with Greek. And at least you didn't have to learn an entire new alphabet!
BTW, Greek not only has masculine and feminine but neuter as well! A table happens to be neuter, while the chair is feminine, but a seat is also neuter, and a mirror is masculine!
Yeah, there are 3 genders in German too. I hear that French has 4, but I don't really understand how! You either have a dangly bit (masculine), the opposite of the dangly bit (feminine), or you have nothing (neuter). What else is there?
Fuck that. Come home.
I'm NOT a quitter, I just like things the EASY way...
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