RainbowSprinkles Posted August 12, 2011 Share Posted August 12, 2011 How would you explain der, die, das? I'm planning on telling her der is for male words, die for female words and das is for neutral words and then giving examples. Is there anything I can add? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted August 12, 2011 Share Posted August 12, 2011 How would you explain der, die, das? I'm planning on telling her der is for male words, die for female words and das is for neutral words and then giving examples. Is there anything I can add? I'd use feminine, masculine and neuter rather than female/male/neutral - there are the very common neuter words for females das Mädchen and das Fräulein. Which of course follow the diminutive rule, and yes non-diminutive nouns that refer to humans are properly male and female (although there is no common feminine word for "girl" meaning girls keep getting referred to as "it") but those are a infinitesimally small number of the total number of nouns in the language - there really is no rhyme or reason to which words are feminine, neuter and masculine. Especially when you learn more than one language with gendered nouns... die Sonne, der Mond, der Tisch - el sol, la luna, la mesa.... :D There are of course some guidelines like words ending in -heit or -keit are feminine. The best list of these guidelines I've seen is in a book I'm having one dd go through this summer that I got at Barnes & Noble - German Grammar Drills - it's orange. They had a bunch I hadn't seen before - that would've been really helpful when I was first learning the language. I still mess up my genders in German... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainbowSprinkles Posted August 12, 2011 Author Share Posted August 12, 2011 Thank you so much!! Very helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiana Posted August 12, 2011 Share Posted August 12, 2011 There are of course some guidelines like words ending in -heit or -keit are feminine. The best list of these guidelines I've seen is in a book I'm having one dd go through this summer that I got at Barnes & Noble - German Grammar Drills - it's orange. They had a bunch I hadn't seen before - that would've been really helpful when I was first learning the language. I still mess up my genders in German... Thanks for the reference! My vocab still stinks and I'm working on improving it :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted August 12, 2011 Share Posted August 12, 2011 When she studies vocabulary, she should memorizes the article together with the noun - because, as matryoshka already said, there is no rhyme or reason to the gender of a word in relation to it's meaning (other than a few suffixes). Girl is neutral, turnip is feminine (something which gave Mark Twain cause to chuckle). Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
In The Great White North Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 When she studies vocabulary, she should memorizes the article together with the noun :iagree: This is SO important. It's never going to "come naturally" or "just sound right" without the hard work of actually memorizing the gender of each word from the start. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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