ARGH! Genders (2 Viewers)

[chepas]

Does everyone have a hell of a time remembering genders? I've tried so many diff ways of memorising, like just memorising it when you learn the word, but sometimes that just doens't work. Also all else I try to do, endless repetition, osmosis, nothign works - and beginners can't use dictionaries in the exams! nooo.

Even nicer choosing out of the three genders is remembering what nominative/genitive/dative etc case goes after that. argh.

What does everyone do to try and remember them then?

Also just posting this cos the german forum is just teeming with actiivity...

Chpas

 

[oranGez]

i dont remember >< . . its ok in speakin coz u can jus mumble n they wont really noe. . but writing =S so dead. . i didnt noe beginnerz werent allowed dictionaries. . . hehe u shouldve done continuers. . .

 

[chepas]

Yeh. I have speaking tomorrow. Great. Just boring guided conversations and some question-response things. Theoretically really easy but when you don't know half the stuff they might put in there like vocab and stuff, could leave ya high and dry. Mumbling good idea. i'll see what happens...

Woulda done continuers but no school cert in it Though spoke it in family when grandparents alive but that was when I was really little and my grammar/vocab is terrible. That's why i chose/had to do beginners...

Is continuers better? Besides the fact you can use dicts in the exams. hehe. Are the themes that you do as boring as the ones in french cont? Individual and all that crap... Spose the one person you can really talk about is yourself...

Chpas

 

[oranGez]

yea itz boring. . i think u also hav 2 noe about the german speakin world as part of it. . . we're doin the topic of sport atm and u cannot believe how BORING it is . . . n lolz i like ur signature, soundz like something ppl at my skool would say . . by now u would hav dun ur exam . . hope u did well!!

 

[chepas]

IT DIED!

Hurray. I deserved it cos I've been a bit of a lazy sod with Ger. Some of the stuff I was lucky I looked over two hours before but do you think I remembered it for the exam? Nope... Oh well. not the end of the world.

Oooh, sport. Joyous. Do they still handle topics really boringly, and with really sad sorta dialogues in textbooks you use? German speaking world. Double joyous.

Sig - The Simpsons. Everything comes back to the Simpsons. It's from that Halloween episode when Marge is abducted by Kang and Kodos and they choose her as the cross species mating programme or soemthing, and they recreate the 'scenes of mating by your species' or something, and that's a pickup line Kang (or Kodos?) uses on her to try and seduce her.... I died when i heard it for the 1st time!

 

[oranGez]

hehe such a positive outlook..i gotta do a 3-4minutes speech on "meine Freizeit" on monday TT .. havent starteddd at all....so dead...ne ideas would b much welcome =S

 

[chepas]

A speech! Lovely. You could always talk about sport... Back to reeealy boring basics I'm just pullin out of th air. Think maybe of about 4-5 different places where you go/what you do in free time and make up crap about it. z.B.,

1) Ich gehe gern zum Strand
2) ...gehe gern einkaufen
3) ...hre gern musik
4) ...treibe gern Sport... usw.

etc. maybe...? Depends how sophisticated cont. is. hehe.

 

[oranGez]

lolz not very sophisticated.. argh i hate those gern phrases, i can neva remember, no matter how simple they are, where to shove the gern ... "am liebsten" does quite well in solving that problem tho =D

 

[Sammy_b]

Can I join on this "Unterhaltung"?
Not sure if this'll help, but I have a few tips for learning some genders.
Every noun that ends in 'ung', 'ion' or 'ik' is feminine.
All nouns ending with 'chen' or 'lein' are neuter.
I'm sure there are other rules, but these are the ones that spring to mind.

 

[Sammy_b]

And yes, the german and french syllabuses are pretty identical. Ja, German is very dull - they've given us the distant-ed course in my school. Gosh, I'm glad I'm not actually doing it by dist-ed, then I would actually have to do every single exercise that they put in there...lol

 

[chepas]

Ah - so sometimes the noun endings help? Sick. Thx

I do german by dist-ed through OHS. Yeah, doing every tedious, repetitive excercise gets VERY langweilig. Then they give us all this other comprehension and writing stuff on top of it so its really fun....

For the 'gern' word it usu. just goes after the verb? It's with that 'Am liebsten' thing that stuffs my word order up.

Do you say 'Am liebsten lese ich Zeitschriften' or 'Am liebsten ich lese Zeitschriften'?

Chpas

 

[oranGez]

im pretty sure its am liebsten lese ich Zeitshriften coz the verb has to be the second idea in the sentence..hehe its so weird, before i did german i dun think i even had ne idea that verbs and nouns etc even existed =| .. hav u guys ever been to germany?? i think i mite b going on exchange at the end of this yr with SCCE ... yay!! =D

 

[chepas]

Kwel,

Good luck with ur exchange if u go! I've never been to Germany. But family used to send back lots of chocolate and cooking stuff, before customs started confiscating it all. DROOOOOOOL. Germans know how to cook... hehe.

I wanna go to uni there. (next to) freeeeeee.

 

[Sammy_b]

I got back from Germany about a month ago, actually . I went for six weeks. It was cool (and not just the weather ). I stayed in Duisburg with a friend who was an exchange student at my school last year and ended up staying with us for a few months, and then I went to Cologne and Munich where I stayed with various friends of my parents. Oh, yes! I forgot to mention - German father. But he didn't bring me up bilingual!!! I'm annoyed. Only been learning for about three and a half years. My German's prolly above average for German continuers, but even after six weeks, nowhere near fluent! Gosh, it's a difficult language. I think I went better in my French speaking exam than my German one...lol. But, yes, go to Germany! You might miss open spaces and get sick of the rain, but they have good chocolate...

 

[Sammy_b]

OH, and yes, it's "Am liebsten lese ich Zeitschriften". Whole 'inverting subject and verb' thing...errrr...thos damn grammatical rules...

 

[oranGez]

i knowwww ay..the grammar sux....n crap, one of the big reasons i wanna go is coz i wanna improve my speaking skills =S hehe i cant wait to eat there, gonna get realllll chubby lolz, mite hav to join a trimm dich program =D

 

[chepas]

Hey Sammy when you were there did you catch any sort of German music scene and anything that you thought would be decent? Cos I was born and raised with 'Schlager' which is the sad (as in pathetic...), faux-romancy stuff that baby-boomers and other over 30s like, and I'd love to know what exists apart from Die toten Hosen/Rammstein/Die Aerzte....?

Would 'Trimm-Dich' be successful in Germany? With the amount of stuff they seem to be churning out it doesn't seem possible... hehe... Ever since I learnt what eine Currywurst is I've been intrigued and sort of grossed out... World of chocolate, Kinder's "Schoko-Bons" are the best. Little drops of heaven... if they still exist! And the minty smartie like thing 'Schoko-Linsen'... they need to be eaten by the bagful.

I wanna see all the extended family up north in Hamburg... That's my big attraction for going there and probably doing ger to bettercommunicate with them.

 

[Sammy_b]

lol, it's funny that u should ask about the music scene. on the radio and in clubs they basically just play english (as in songs in english, not just songs from england). They like "die Aerzte" though. Somebody burned a few cd's of theirs while I was there, but other than that, can't help you much with the music q's. i did figure out they really do like rock (and according to a friend, there are lots of German trance bands if you're into that). Die Aerzte are funny! I met a guy there who said that most foreigners are really befuddled as to why the germans like them so much..."weird german rock"...hehe

Was in aller Welt ist Trimm-dich?! lol, weight loss program, oder so was?

Ja, das Essen in Deutschland ist sehr gut. We certainly have more of a variety, especially with Asian food (at least if you're in sydney), aber ich vermisse das deutsche Brot und die Schokolade! I think I've become a bread snob now.
Surprisingly, although there were certainly some overweight people, i think i actually saw fewer obese people there...hmmm, interesting. Maybe cos most people eat their main meal at lunch.

Say, do u have much contact with your relatives in Hamburg? Like, do u have cousins u can write to?
I should stop procrastinating and go study.

 

[chepas]

lol. Trimm-dich ist nur einen Witz. Man macht das Trimm-dich-Programm wenn man zu dick ist, also, du hast recht!

Im letzten Jaar habe ich mit meine Familie in Deutschland nicht so oft gesprochen, weil ich heute so faul bin. Though my rellies are all my mum's age. They're still good to talk to, but now it'd jsut be a bit weird. Nor do any cousins exist over there, that I know of. Just one 7 year old that is a real little szite. It's good when they come out to Australia cos they bring out the food and then take us out to dinner and general merriment and European throwing money around... One of my great-uncles is a bit scary on the exterior, making talking to him a bit intimidating at times, but he's a real nice guy.

Woah, enough of my biography. I know of this Jeannette (Biedermann) singer that was on this soap "Gute Zeiten Schlechte Zeiten" and she's gone all anglophone and sings songs only in English now, and one of them off her album from 2000 was "Oh Shit! I Love You!" The song title just cracks me up.. She's godawfully teenybopper and pop but her album is so funny. ANd at times she ahs the most outrageously hilarious accent too.

Oh right, i was supposed to FINISh the crapping on. hehe.
Chpas

 

[classics_chic]

Unfortunately it's one of those things you just have to remember. Sometimes there's patterns, sometimes not.

Don't try to fool the examiners in the spoken outside of school (for me, it was Parramatta High). They know, believe me, they know.

(Oh and just to make you feel better, after having done Extension German last year, I can tell you that Ancient Greek, which I started this year, is much, much worse!)