Monday 12 July 2010

Die - Das - Der ?

Deutsch. Alemán. Alemão. Allemand. Tyska. Whatever they call it in your language it means the same: German: a really beautiful language spoken in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, etc. And a really difficult language to learn! At least that's my opinion. I've been learning it for about 4 months by myself on Livemocha, and I feel like I've learned nothing! I'm not going to say it's one of the most difficult languages on Earth, because it's not. Not even close. And I can tell you that because I'm a big fan of languages. I've tried to learn Swedish (not easy) and Russian, which is a really complicated language. Not to mention Arabic with the whole different alphabet in which letters change depending on where they are located in a word. So yeah, I could say it's one of the easiest languages compared to others; it has the same alphabet as Spanish and English, it has the same roots as English, some words are almost identical in English! But it's not that easy; it has 3 different articles, because there are 3 different genders for the words: masculine (der), feminine (die), and neutral (das), which makes it even more complicated. I can speak fluently only 2 languages: Spanish and English. In English, it's really easy because there's only one article (the) that is applied for every word, no matter what the gender is (the girl, the boy). In Spanish it's not that complicated either; there are 2 articles for 2 genders: masculine (el) and feminine (la). And it's really easy to know what gender goes for each word since most of the words that end up on 'a' are feminine, and the rest are masculine (la niña, el niño). Of course there are some exceptions. But in German there's no way to know what the gender of a word is! (as far as I know) For example you can say der Junge (the boy). As he's a boy it's pretty obvious that you need to use 'der' since it's masculine. If you're talking about a woman then you say die Frau, so there you're using 'die' which is feminine. But when it comes to talking about a girl then you have to say das Mädchen in which 'das' is the neutral article, so after thinking about it for a loong time I decided to stop questioning why it was das Mädchen and not die Mädchen. And that's just an example! I'm really trying to learn each word with its gender, so I can use it in a sentence, but my memory it's not that powerful!

Then, when you use adjectives to describe a word, its ending changes depending on the gender of the word. i.e. Adjective: jung. Der junger Mann (the young man), die junge Frau (the young woman).

And now the hardest part! :P The article might change depending on where it's located in a sentence, like for example: Sie gibt dem Mann einen Brief. (She gives the man a letter.) The noun article der changes into dativ (dem) and ein into akkusativ (einen). Don't ask why because I still don't understand. :/

Good news is that I was talking with Victor (a friend who's also going to D1840) and he told me that we'll have a German course when we're in Germany.. so I think it won't be that bad.

On another matter..
MY PAPERS WERE ACCEPTED IN THE EMBASSY! :D So that means I got my Visa.. or I'll get it. They told me to pick it up on the 2nd week of August! That's one step closer to Germany! I need now to buy the plane tickets, but I'm going to wait until the last week of July, because it'll be cheaper then (according to the travel agents).

Until then..

Bis dann! :)

2 comments:

  1. Hey, I'm Sophie from Germany, and i jsut found your Blog on the Internet.
    I know that nearly all foreigners get desperate about das Mädchen.. I think I can explain it (the second time this day XD)
    The ending chen in german is always something smaller, sweeter than the original. For example Stohl (chair) -> Stühlchen (small chair). Often the vocals a,o,u change into ä,ö and ü. Its quite the same with Mädchen: The original word was Maid, Magd (very old German, like a woman who was working for her master), and so the smaller ones where Maidchen. End Maidchen turned into Mädchen, Maid disappeared and the queastion is answered i hope ;D
    And the Dativ/Akkusativ thing: Its like this in many languages I think, Dativ is who you give the thing, and the thing you usa/give/take is Akkusativ. Often its logical, but some verbs are with Dativ or Akkusativ for no reason, so you should learn the so called Kasus always with the verb, like in french for example :D
    I don't know if this is intersting for you, i just wrote what came into my mind ;D IF you ahve any further wuastions to German or Germany, you can ask !
    Best reagrds from cold Germany, Sophie :D

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  2. Hello Sophie, danke for the explanation! You made it easier for me, thanks! ;)

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