I'm really struggling with die/der/das

[SnuggleBuggleBoo]

I've been learning German on Duolingo for a while, which is fun, but they seem to think you'll pick up on how grammar works just through practicing sentences. It's not working for me though! I'm learning to read German this way but don't have a hope of writing or speaking it because I just can't figure out the gender thing. Please advise!!

So I understand that nouns have genders and you use 'die' for female, 'der' for male and 'das' for neuter. That's all fine. What is absolutely melting my brain is the whole 'Dative/Accusative/definite article/indirect object..' palaver. I cannot understand what any of that means and I am so confused about why you should ever have to change the gender word you use just because the thing is on the receiving end of something. And the way you sometimes shove an 'en or an em' on the end of 'mein' or 'dein' or whatever.

Ok so it seems I haven't even mastered English yet!! I don't even know how to explain it! I keep watching Youtube videos but they're just making it worse! I need someone to explain things to me like I'm a very small, somewhat slow child. Please can you either have a bash yourself or link me to some helpful resource? Thank you!!

It is hard but learning Turkish is even harder.

I think it's helpful to separate the concepts. So:

definite article = the

indefinite article = a

You can definitely remember that! Then make sure you understand the cases.

Accusative: the object of the sentence (e.g. I opened THE DOOR, Jane bought THEs DRESS)

Genitive: possessive (the suitcase OF THE MAN), but now rare so you can ignore it for now

Dative: pretty much everything else, usually with a preposition (he found the book IN THE KITCHEN)

If you can get your head round these principles, it will then be much easier to understand how the articles work in context.

The Goethe Institute offers German courses, where these things will be explained in a much more intuitive way. www.goethe.de/ins/de/en/m/kur/typ.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiA8aOeBhCWARIsANRFrQE9vlVkGMC4wONYcVj0EZpxks8InXS9CfITENuHVGntXbDXXYmH6WkaAub_EALw_wcB There are also free Oak Academy lessons for KS3 and 4 German: classroom.thenational.academy/subjects-by-key-stage/key-stage-3/subjects/german

Sounds like you haven't come across some core grammatical concepts before and that makes things difficult now. Duolingo is really really bad for this and it may make more sense for you to look for a more structured way of teaching- pp have made some suggestions. If there's a really good bookstore near you maybe also browse there for a textbook that appeals to you.

Essentially though nouns and adjectives have

• gender

-number (singular/plural

• "case" (declension), so like "I" (nominative or subject case ) vs "me" (accusative or dative if it's "to" me), also genitive as in "Peter's).

German nouns have a gender and also change form depending on which case they're in. So der Elefant/des Elefanten/dem Elefanten/den Elefanten.)

The really nasty thing about German adjectives is that they'll vary depending both on the gender of the noun they're used with AND the case it's in. Not much advice on that I'm afraid beyond learning by heart. I'm a native speaker and I'd hate to have to learn this!

@SnuggleBuggleBoo
Duolingo is good for revision (that is what I use it for), but really bad for learning a new language because of the really bad garmmar background.
I am a native German speaker and I think a course at a Goethe institute or online Babbel is way better.
The declination of articles, nouns and adjectives is not very diferent from other European languages using that system (Spanish, French, Italian)
Perhaps this helps a little:
germanwithlaura.com/declension/
germanforenglishspeakers.com/reference/complete-declension-tables/

Thank you so much everyone! I had hoped to really get into it this weekend but I've been enjoying myself doing tax instead! I do appreciate all your input. I'll read everyone's replies next weekend and come up with a bit of an action plan!

My trouble is I get bored really easily. I'm a very playful person and serious studying isn't my strongpoint. I've managed to stick at Duolingo since March and don't want to just give up by getting overwhelmed with a 'proper' course. Something aimed at older kids or teens would suit me well I think!

@SnuggleBuggleBoo I had this same problem and bought the French version of this book.
Once you get the gist in English it's much easier to apply it to the language you are learning.

amzn.eu/d/inkqULj

Don’t forget the Nominative: the subject of the sentence and the form of the word usually found in the dictionary (e.g. THE CAT bit me. JANE bought the dress.)

I think it’s easy for English speakers to understand the difference between the Nominative and Accusative, at least in principle, because we have subject and object pronouns. However, determining whether a noun should be in the Accusative or the Dative is harder because we’re not used to distinguishing between direct objects and indirect objects. But it’s not bad once you get used to it.

I never studied German for long enough to master the grammar, but I think that memorising correct sentences really helps. I used to find it easy to learn lists of vocabulary, but that turned out to be less useful.

Buy a basic grammar book where this is explained. It’s actually mostly logical once you understand it - with a few exceptions!

Learn the lists of which article for which case and gender of by heart. I did this at 16 and still know it now many decades later.
Remember subject nominative, direct object accusative.
Learn main prepositions which cause dative, genitive and those which cause accusative:
Dative: aus, außer, bei, dank, seit, mit, nach, von, zu
Accusative: bis, durch, ohne, für, gegen, ohne, um, wider, entlang
Gen: außerhalb, innerhalb, trotz, während, wegen, anstatt. Note: you will hear native speakers use wegen with dative, that’s fine, they can, but I would learn it correctly as a non native speaker.
Then there are either / or prepositions- for these in general it’s dative rest, accusative motion - so ich bin in der Stadt, but ich gehe ich die Stadt. Note: there are exceptions
Then there are phrases, verbs, that cause either dative or accusative. You will learn these over many years and still make mistakes, but less and less with time - duolingo will never get you to a level of fluency to master this, you will need to spend time immersed in German, ideally where it is spoken, but also reading and using the language.
German is not easy, I speak it fluently, passed the Goethe C2 exam, but still make mistakes. I lived there, use the language all the time, read novels, watch films in German. You will improve, but have to enjoy the journey as there is no end to learning a language.

German has more flexible sentence structure than English. That's why it needs cases, otherwise you would not know who is doing what to whom. In English you can only say "I love you" (meaning I am doing the loving). In German that's "Ich liebe dich". However, in German you can also say "You love I" ("Dich liebe ich") and the I is still doing the loving.

That's why you need cases. They tell you

• who is doing the action (nominative/subject),
• who the action is done to (accusative/direct object).
• and who is the recipient of something (dative/indirect object), often the recipient of the direct object

"Laura (subject/ nominative) gibt (action) dem Kind (dative/indirect object) den Ball (accusative/ direct object)".
Or: Dem Kind gibt Laura den Ball.
Or: Den Ball gibt Laura dem Kind.

The genitive is used to describe who owns something as in "Lucy's ball" (Lucys Ball/ der Ball des Mädchens).

Masculine, feminine and neuter make no sense at all. Girl is neuter, table is masculine and a bottle is feminine. Words ending in "e" are often feminine though (die Sonne, Tonne, Blondine, Lampe etc). But German(s) LOVE exceptions!

I am so confused about why you should ever have to change the gender word you use just because the thing is on the receiving end of something.
This is something I wish they had told me in school :)
In English, one way you know the role a word has in a sentence is because of its position in the sentence.
So:
A. The dog bit the man.
B. The man bit the dog.
Sentence B is weird, sentence A is more typical.

In German there's a different system for showing what role each word has.
So in German you can say:
A1. Der Mann biß den Hund.
A2. Den Mann biß der Hund.
These are both the more typical scenario where the dog bites the man.

So both English and German have a way of showing what role each word plays.
The advantage of the English system is that you don't have to change the articles.
The disadvantage of the English system is that the word order is not flexible.

I can point at a man and use A2 above, Den Mann biß der Hund, to show that THAT is the man who was bitten by the dog (note how complicated that is in English)

HTH.

Just to add, you are not changing the gender of the word, the gender stays the same, the case is changing.

Another helpful tip - dative plural= n’s everywhere = “Mit den jungen Kindern” zum Beispiel . Helps to remember until it becomes automatic

For German (unfortunately) you really need to crack the grammer. Otherwise further down the line it will trip you up.
I found the only way I could get to grips was a lot of repetition

It's too complicated to explain in a thread. Have a look at Bitesize:-

www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zg8pycw/revision/1

Learn German with Anja is pretty good too & she has random stuff but also grammar clips.
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/394123857634?hash=item5bc39ccee2:g:87EAAOSwX5FisIfL&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA4O4OaadHF3Yadz4BXCTaPj17x1wzsUgh06bG8vbOUNXM9mbDVZADOhkrTXqk5SPiRS5pHmGLgIpjJ2%2BXehoh6V5A7OoioZynaPioV0uqS9DJp3ZG1DQy%2FjfhA4to1YeFiwfeusDXGC%2F1ZeInar9rM6fo25paVx472F9EiU7oLalUalrTNX7s%2FIZXngj28eaJHfVujDDkLfMJhx%2BzmDiwKJ2MhJf8Dk4jmqan7fEUz0Z2mIudN3ujZj97Xp%2F5BJtxTWPeP9kVk3LlzDB0NymcfQt2CupkcixXmDRQFVBs2r5R%7Ctkp%3ABFBMwN6ds89h
https://www.youtube.com/@LearnGermanwithAnja/featured

This book is old fashioned but good

Sorry it has mixed up my links for some reason!

Hey everyone! I've just been re-reading the thread, and I want to say thank you so much to you all!! I think there's the faintest glimmer of light through the trees now!!

So I now understand that you have the subject and then the object is the thing they're doing something to or with or whatever. I know all the nominative and accusative cases (it's just der - den that changes for accusative right?) and I've learnt the prepositions that always take the accusative too. Still very foggy on the dative but at least I know I AM capable of learning something now, even if it is like trying to break up titanium with a pickaxe made of boiled cabbage.

I think one of the biggest reasons I'm struggling is I never learnt the ENGLISH for all this stuff. I had no idea what words like 'preposition' and phrases like 'indirect object' were, and I'm still shakey on the other parts of speech. I was only ever really confident on what a 'noun' was. Now thanks to German I'm getting the hang of 'verb' but I'm still in the dark about the rest, so I'm kind of having to learn all that too, as I go along!

I've officially been using Duolingo for a year now! Supposedly I've picked up over 3000 words! If I could only crack this grammar malarkey.

What do you guys think of Babbel for practicing pronunciation? I get cross with Duolingo for often letting me get away with something I realise I'm mispronouncing as I'm saying it! I'd like something a bit more accurate that makes me try again if I fluff it.

Sympathies, OP! German grammar is tough. I'm a German, French and Spanish teacher. German causes my students a lot more problems with grammar than the other two languages do, and it's largely cases that are the problem. Especially once you get onto the fact that the endings of adjectives change according to gender and case too!

If you are having trouble getting your head around the whole concept of the cases, it's worth thinking about the fact that it's similar to he/him, or she/her, or I/me in English. When you change from he to him, you're not changing gender. It's still masculine, but the grammatical 'job' that the word is doing in the sentence has changed. You use 'he' when that person is doing the verb, and 'him' when the person is having the verb done to him. So it would sound totally wrong to say "I saw he yesterday." or "Him went to the shops."

Oh and you're not alone not knowing this stuff in English! Most people don't. I learned all I know about grammar through learning modern foreign languages and and Latin! It's been a bit better from my 17yo dd's school cohort onwards, as they all did the dreaded SPaG SATs. Very unpopular, but a relief to secondary school MFL teachers .

This is why I failed German in school...

This is why I failed German in school...

The thing is, understanding the theory isn't hard, as long as you have a patient and competent teacher. But learning all the articles and endings thoroughly and reliably enough to actually be able to produce the right ones at speaking speed is very, very hard.

On the upside, the majority of the time you will be understood perfectly well even if you get them wrong!

This book was recommended to me and I've found it really helpful with my German grammar.

www.amazon.co.uk/Unlocking-German-Paul-Noble-bestselling/dp/0008135851/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=aba97443-85d2-4299-b4e2-2585e1c24acc

I’m having exactly the same issue as the OP, I’ve got to A2 on Duolingo plus hazy memories of GCSE German.

I have tried bite size and other links but what I really need is an app that drills me on German grammar, as I learn much better that way than just reading. Is there such a thing?

@BinleyMegaChippy I ordered that book on your recommendation and have just finished the first chapter! It was obviously the very basic stuff I know already but I am LOVING it because it's got such a laid back/informal feel with lovely short chapters, taking everything really step-by-step. Perfect for me and my slow brain!! I'm really hoping Paul Nobel is the answer for me!