Nai, why must you Germans have so many ways to indicate definite article? And by extension, indefinite article?
Das, die, and der. I don't understand this silly gender based noun system. Why is a die Krawatte female? Why is der Tisch male? Die Frau is female, but Mädchen is neutral?
It is my recommendation that you Deutsche make all definite and indefinite articles neutral.
Would make my vocab easier.
@Lucius
Nai, why must you Germans have so many ways to indicate definite article? And by extension, indefinite article?Das, die, and der. I don't understand this silly gender based noun system. Why is a die Krawatte female? Why is der Tisch male? Die Frau is female, but Mädchen is neutral?
It is my recommendation that you Deutsche make all definite and indefinite articles neutral.
Would make my vocab easier.
So you're learning German. Good choice.
But German speakers are an elitist lot. We don't like company, so we made learning our language a real pain in the ass. Ask Mark Twain.
And, to be honest, most Germans have some trouble with the language. Especially Genetiv / Dativ use. "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod" became a rather famous series of books, just because of that (correctly, that should be: "Der Dativ ist des Genitivs Tod"😉. There are also entire verb forms that even students of German literature usually don't get right, operating with some additional words (e.g. "I would bake..." should be "Ich bueke", but since that verb form is entirely uncommon, people say "Ich wuerde backen."😉 There is a reason why "Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache" has become a proverb over here.
But you should view things in a positive fashion: Islandic is even harder when it comes to different forms for single articles and words. In fact, they cram so much information into single words with the respective endings, that they don't need any form of sentence structuring.