Why do all German language resources suggest learning nouns with "der, die and das"? Assuming the noun is singular, a noun heard in context with either "die" and "das" can have its gender uniquely inferred. But "der" could be male or female. So why not learn "den, die and das"?
-
Technically you should just learn word gender, but easiest is pairing with the definite. And then the problem is being in non-nominative case, which _may_ confuse... but in the end there should be no confusion: Der Schüle is just in another case, because Schüle is a f. word
That's understood, but why make it harder for the student by choosing a case without a one-to-one mapping between articles and genders?
-
-
What makes in worse is that sometimes I read "der is masculine" or "this is a der-word" which is false in more cases than it's true! Teaching that "der" is an indication of a word being either masculine or feminine. (All this is assuming singular number.)
-
Not sure if it makes it easier, but I think the assumption is that you learn the words in the Nominativ case, which is the base case. And then you learn rules about what the article turns into for each of the other cases.
- Show replies
New conversation -
-
-
My German is a bit oldie (haven't spoken or written almost any in 11 years) but gender != plural, the mapping is 1-1: a word is eithre masculine, feminine or neutral (and each can be plural as well)
-
No, that's absolutely correct, but there are six possible cases (der, die, das, den, dem, des) which are distributed across the different combinations of case, gender and singular/plural. But if we ignore plural, then "die" is *uniquely* feminine, "das" is *uniquely* neuter...
- Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.