The German articles DER DIE DAS

Originally I hadn’t planned to teach German in English. Until recently, when a couple of my Spanish students suggested me to teach German in English the same I do in Spanish. So I thought: “Why not?”.

Only that this time, instead of beginning with the German alphabet, I decided to start with the German articles DER DIE DAS. These are the German definite articles. The same as what the article THE means for English.

It is no news to almost anyone that German grammar is quite more complex the English grammar. Therefore, why not begin with the German articles, which are three instead of just one. This is an introduction to understanding why German is a little bit more difficult than English  🙂  Despite both having the same linguistic root. Because while Spanish is a Latin tongue, English is Germanic.

So, let begin by saying that all German nouns are classified in on of three different categories: DER, DIE or DAS. Or masculine, feminine and neutral respectively.

For some few nouns it can be pretty obvious. Like the word for man (Mann), which is masculine (DER); the word for woman (Frau), which is DIE (feminine); and the word for child (Kind), which is DAS (neutral).

However, the great majority of nouns are not obvious at all. Therefore there is no way of avoiding what we all hate: simply memorize a whole bunch of vocabulary together with their respective articles.

So, this is just the beginning. Our German class #1. And since we are just starting, I made it as short short and simple as possible. Then we will gradually make it more and more complicated.

In our next German lesson I will introduce you to the German alphabet and how each letter is pronounced.

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