Die Artikel!
I’ve never been so confused in my life, and I’m not sure there is an easy solution to clear that confusion. Have you come across German articles for nouns? If you haven’t, rejoice! And if you have, well you’ll know that there’s a whole tangled jungle lurking behind the innocent looking: der, die, and das.
Last week, we started to learn German and we were full of confidence and eagerness. Then we stepped into the dark tangled jungle of articles, any confidence and comfort we gained with German was quickly snuffed out. We literally have to remember which articles go with which noun, there’s no partner or rule, and then we need to remember how they change according to the verb in the sentence (that’s what the image below is demonstrating).
Everyone in class is hoping for a saviour, a rule, a tip, a trick, anything!! But alas, the only thing we can rely upon is our memory. Thank goodness our teacher is patient, she also has handy games and exercises to help us become more familiar with ‘die Artikel’ (the articles).
On a positive, apparently even Germans struggle with this. Yay, misery is company.