Grammar Lesson

Last night Jutta and I spent a good hour or so working on German adjective endings and articles. At the last German class, my teacher had given me a story ("Rotkäppchen," aka "Little Red Riding Hood") with adjective endings to fill in. After an hour of work, explanations, and chart drawings, I think I understand how most of the endings work. The next problem will be putting it to practice, because writing them down on paper is easier than having to use them in speech quickly.

This week in one of the school German classes the teacher told me about the most common German grammatical mistake: distinguishing between das, das, and dass.

das is an article for a neutral noun.
das is a pronoun that basically means "it."
dass means "that," but not for every instance of English "that" is "dass" used.

For example, "That is an auto" would translate into German as "Das ist ein Auto," which in English is literally "It is an Auto," not "Dass ist ein Auto." There doesn't seem to be much difference, but it bothers a lot of Germans when people get it wrong.

Thank goodness this is easy for German teachers. For everyone else, it's difficult.

And that's not the end of today's German grammar lesson! At Pacifica, we learned articles in a chart from Nominative, Accusative, to Dative. In Germany, students don't learn their articles in this fashion. In fact, internationally students learn German articles in another order: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative.

__ Nom Gen Dat Acc
der der des dem den
die die der der die
das das des dem das

It's another one of those things that seems unimportant (after all, the articles are the same no matter which order you learn them in), but this way is easier if you have to check on German grammar charts or if someone is trying to explain why this article is this article by reciting this chart. Besides, sometimes it's good to be on the same train of thought.

And that's the end of today's grammar lesson. No homework, enjoy your weekend!