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muckefuckI feel like I'm falling behind in my endeavour to provide free German instruction for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caitalainn (and anyone else interested in picking up some of the language). Three days ago she asked me about adjective endings and only now am I getting down to drafting a decent answer.
Every language has some bits that seem inexplicably complicated, as if they were created just to confound learners. What the hell are the rules for the use of the articles in English? For the perfective marker in Chinese? For por and para in Spanish? For many learners, German adjective endings represent just such a thing. So let's ease in slowly, shall we?
Basically, there are two sets: strong and weak. The strong endings are used when there is no article. In fact, you'll see some resemblances to the definite article in them. Let's use mein "my" to illustrate them:
der Bär "the bear" mein Honigbär "my honeybear"
die Eule "the owl" meine blonde Eule "my blonde owl"
das Gespenst "the ghost" mein Schreckgespenst "my spectre"
die Kinder "the children" meine liebe Kinder "my dear children"
Note the last example: All adjectives proceeding the noun have to have some sort of ending, though it's not always the same ending. Cf.:
dein großer schwuler Honigbär "your big gay honeybear"
meine kleine grüne Kaktus "my little green cactus"
ein neues Schreckgespenst "a new bugbear"
viele unglückliche Kinder "many unhappy children"
Note the resemblance between the underlined masculine and neutre endings and, respectively, the masculine and neutre articles (der, das). If it makes it easier, you could think of the usual ending "skipping" the first adjective and attaching itself to the following one(s).
Exercise:
caitalainn (and anyone else interested in picking up some of the language). Three days ago she asked me about adjective endings and only now am I getting down to drafting a decent answer.Every language has some bits that seem inexplicably complicated, as if they were created just to confound learners. What the hell are the rules for the use of the articles in English? For the perfective marker in Chinese? For por and para in Spanish? For many learners, German adjective endings represent just such a thing. So let's ease in slowly, shall we?
Basically, there are two sets: strong and weak. The strong endings are used when there is no article. In fact, you'll see some resemblances to the definite article in them. Let's use mein "my" to illustrate them:
der Bär "the bear" mein Honigbär "my honeybear"
die Eule "the owl" meine blonde Eule "my blonde owl"
das Gespenst "the ghost" mein Schreckgespenst "my spectre"
die Kinder "the children" meine liebe Kinder "my dear children"
Note the last example: All adjectives proceeding the noun have to have some sort of ending, though it's not always the same ending. Cf.:
dein großer schwuler Honigbär "your big gay honeybear"
meine kleine grüne Kaktus "my little green cactus"
ein neues Schreckgespenst "a new bugbear"
viele unglückliche Kinder "many unhappy children"
Note the resemblance between the underlined masculine and neutre endings and, respectively, the masculine and neutre articles (der, das). If it makes it easier, you could think of the usual ending "skipping" the first adjective and attaching itself to the following one(s).
Exercise:
- "your beloved gay Mucki" =
- "an ugly (hässlich) Yankee" =
- "my little green ghost" =
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no subject
2. ein hässlich Yankee
3. meine kleine grüne Gespenst
---Schrecki
OMG!
Re: OMG!
I really don't understand these rules at all.
no subject
Would you do better with a little chart giving all the declensions at once? How did you master Russian inflections?
Muckefuck is masculine, so the adjectives need to have the masculine ending -er. However, you can skip it on the possessive adjectives. So it's dein lieber Mucki. Same rule applies to ein in the second example, but not to hässlich because that's a real adjective. Since the noun in the third example is neutre, the ending is -es instead of -er (masculine) or -e (feminine). Like I said, if you think of the forms of the definite article, that should help you to keep these endings straight.
no subject
I still have all my charts of Russian case endings and such. I should hang them on the wall.
Thank you! I've been thinking of taking a class to, you know, make a goddamn friend, but French starts while I'm in VT. Maybe I should just go for the German ...
Ein hasselhoffliche Mueckchen?
Re: Ein hasselhoffliche Mueckchen?
Re: Ein hasselhoffliche Mueckchen?
Don't blame me; blame the person who used the word haesslich in a writing sample.
meine lieben Kinder
Um, no -- at least, not in my 'lect, which has meine lieben Kinder.
Oh, and cactuses (cacti?) are masculine in German, at least for me: mein kleiner grüner Kaktus (steht draußen am Balkon, holleri, holleri, hollero!).
Er, got carried away there; there's a song by the Comedian Harmonists with that title.