Der, die or das...? There's always a one in three chance I'll get it right. These three little words give me this biggest pain in the ass while trying to learn German. All three translate to simply 'the'. But German, being German, of course it is not so simple as 'the'. Every noun is either masculine (der), feminine (die), or neutral (das). There is no actual reasoning as to why a noun is put into one of these categories. The word for 'woman' is feminine. Makes sense... but the word for 'girl' is neutral. Many words ending with 'er' are masculine, but 'nummer' (number) is feminine. With as much as Germans like rules, there's just no der, die, or das rules. I've just been wondering if when a new word is invented, like 'ipod', if there's some word council that sits down and decides whether it should be Die Ipod, Der Ipod, or Das Ipod. And if so, do they just go by whichever sounds best?
To make things more complicated, the form of the article changes depending how the noun is being used in a sentence. In the accustive form, 'der' changes to 'den', but 'die' and 'das' stay the same. But then they throw dative in there. Which the concept of dative in the first place is difficult, and I don't even feel like trying to explain it. Here, 'der' and 'das' both change to 'dem' and 'die' changes to 'der'. After that there's genetive, which I only kind of understand. Then 'der' and 'das' change to 'des' and 'die' is once again 'der'.
This rant doesn't even really cover all the complications, but a rant was needed none the less.
Now just because:
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3 comments:
Sarah, that is one of my all-time favorite photos!
I had forgotten all about it (even though you probably stole it off my old website).
I would just stick with "duh."
Geeze, Sarah, it's so simple...why can't you understand that horse is masculine because it's bigger than a bread box and ash tray is feminine because it fits in the palm of your hand?
THE PHOTO ROCKS!
Ehaus Knights, ASSEMBLE!
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