Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[ad-miral]

CP, I learned the grammatics of German very hard and sometimes I still get very bad marks in exams.

My very big help was that I learned the declination of e.g. the articles by heart.


masculine feminine neutral
nominative: der die das singular
genitive: des der des
dative: dem der dem
akkusative: den die das

nom.: die plural
gen: der
dat.: den
akk.: die

wthe declination of personal pronounce is very similar to it, like mein, meines, meinem mein in masculine singular

This declination is very similar to the latin language
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If I say "I love you" to someone, then I also have to say "I also love everyone else inside you, I love the whole world because of you, I also love myself inside you." -- Erich Fromm, the Art of Love

[CP]

Well, I know how to decline the articles -- and the adjectives, for that matter -- but you have to admit that the nouns don't decline fully, and not logically.

And what is sensible about this? Masculine dative singular:

gutem Wein [no determiner]
einem guten Wein [determiner]

If this were Latin, the dative would be more like:

gutem Weinem
einem gutem Weinem

For the feminine dative singular, we get:

guter Suppe [no determiner]
einer guten Suppe [determiner]

What is the point of changing gut to guten for both masculine and feminine singular -- not to mention neuter singular and all plurals -- when you have a determiner that (presumably) gives you the gender already (gutem for masculine, guter for feminine) (but, oops, also gutem for neuter and guter for all plurals!). The noun doesn't change at all -- except in the plural, for no reason at all.

So, I get the changes. I just have trouble keeping them straight, because they make no sense.
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[Mirea]

My mother tongue language is Swiss German, it's a dialect of the German language though the pronunciation is quite different and we have a lot of French words in it. Similar languages are German of course and the German languages (English, Nederlands etc.)

It was very fun to read that text by Mark Twain but is it really that hard to learn, CP? I know the declinations are very difficult, I'm struggling too, sometimes, because they differ slightly in my own mother tongue. But I wouldn't say they make no sense or there are no rules, you just can't take them out of their context in a particular sentence, because they depend on the object and subject.

There's a very good site that explains the rules without getting too complicated (and a lot of school grammar books are really complicated, they explain stuff that nobody needs at all )

http://www.german-grammar.de/grammar/content/grammar_6_10.htm#chapter9
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"Who only speaks one language doesn't know his own" Goethe

[befree69]

Hello Clarissa!

Thanks for you reply. I�ve got no idea which Slavic language is the best to learn. Surely the most spoken Slavic language in the world is Russian.

But Slavic languages with Cyrillics ( you know привет, поминать,...) are too difficult for foreigners. For Slavics is Cyrillics just a little barrier (because of similarity) but for other nations it might be more difficult. At least, it�s worth trying it.

I should suggest you to learn my language, Slovak But no, I really don�t know. You should try to learn a little bit in one or more Slavic languages and choose the most beautiful. Or visit a country and then decide the language...
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...every man is the architect of his own fortune...

[ClarissaMach]

Just adding new material:

"The difference between a language and a dialect can be political rather than linguistic. For example, linguistically, Croatian and Serbian are closely related dialects of the same language. However, they are written in different scripts and are spoken by people of different religions living in Catholic Christian Croatia and Orthodox Christian Serbia respectively. They are considered different languages for political reasons.

Macedonian is considered by Bulgarians as a dialect of their language while Macedonians themselves consider it a separate language. Since Bulgaria has long claimed Macedonia as part of its territory, the reasons for each view are obvious!

Low German (spoken in Northern Germany) and Dutch (Netherlands) are linguistically dialects but politically separate languages. Low German and Swiss German are mutually unintelligible but are both considered to be German. There are more differences between Italian spoken in different cities in Italy than between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.

The main language of Iraq and Morocco are both called Arabic but they differ greatly. The Mandarin speaking government of China considers China's other languages (like Cantonese and Wu) to be dialects whereas they are often very different."

Source: http://www.krysstal.com/langfams.html
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Stormy Weather.

[ClarissaMach]