…besser: Der hässlichste Gesicht der deutschen Sprache

I have identified at least four huge obstacles when learning German. I would like to describe them, but for making it bearable I am going to detail them one by one. First, let’s start with one simple list:

1- Declinations and cases
2- Extremely long and complicated words, and words with no clear meaning
3- Pronunciation
4- Structure of the sentence

A lot have been said about how difficult is to learn this language and where the difficulty is localized. For me, far away from any other thing, the first point of my list appears to be the ugliest and most horrific of all: The declinations and the cases. For those who are not familiar with these terms (happy those who still rest in the comfort of A1…), they indicate the peculiar characteristic of German grammar by which the adjectives, articles, possessive pronouns, personal pronouns and nouns are modified according to certain verbs and prepositions that determine the „case“ (Genitiv, Dativ, Nominativ and Akkusativ). Not happy with all this confusion, the modification will also vary according to the gender, which… (add one more thing and I will kill myself with a banana!)… not only is feminine and masculine, but has the great idea to include also the „neutral“ classification.

Truly speaking, in very few situations I have been able to understand why you should use one case and not another one… the only solution, I guess, is to repeat and repeat and repeat (and do it more -let’s say- thousand times) those crazy-brain-burning exercises like the one we have done in class.

Do not lose hope, look at me and remember that there is always someone suffering more than you.