I have a German test tommorow, and the language was invented by a languistic sadist! For those of you who are unfamiliar with the language, you have no idea how lucky you are to have never had to face the German language.
Everything is complicated in German. For instance, let's take the word "the." In English we have one word for it, the Japanese omit it completely, and even the Spanish and the Italians limit themselves to two different forms of the word, but you can tell which one to use from the last letter in the noun. German, on the other hand, uses three: Der, Die, and Das. There are no rules describing which to use when. I mean, your German teacher will pretend there are rules, but will immediatly follow it up by giving you a list of exceptions with more words than follow the rule.
Supposedly, Der, Die, and Das are decided by the "gender" of each noun. For example, a man would be a masculine noun, so it would get "der." A woman would be a feminine noun, so it would get "die." And a pencil would be a neuteral noun, and get a "das." Let's review with some other examples. Your female dog would be a masculine noun, so it would get a "der." Your tomcat would be a feminine noun, so it would get a "die." And a little girl would be a neutral noun, so it would get a "das."
Confused? Probably, but you still haven't even congegated the thing! I can't even do that in English! Apparently, if your word is in the "nomminative case," you use the word, for example, "der" to mean "the." If it's in the "accusative case," you use the word "den" to mean "the." If it's in the "dative case," you use the word "dem" to mean "the." If it's in the "genetive case," you can't figure it out, because you got lost way back trying to figure out what a "nomminative case" is. All of this getting confused you do is called "congegating."
What irritates me about this class is that people go around passing the rumor that our language is "based on German." German is filled with words that try to mess you up into thinking that we have the same word in english, but it's not true. The most famous example is "bekommen," a word which looks like "become," but means "recieve." After learning German, all of a sudden you walk into a resteraunt and ask to become the main course. Next thing you know, you're on the deep frier about to be served to a bunch of German businessmen who know enough English to say "I want to eat American."
Now here's the funny part: of the Germans I know (and I know a lot, seeing as how I am living in Germany), more than 75% speak English. So why am I learning German anyway? For the remaining 25%? No, they only speak Turkish (Germany has a large group of Turkish immigrant living in their country). So German class is not a technically a nessecity, yet it's still required by the school I'm attending. Wonderful educational system, huh?
