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MT German Case System | ||
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| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7102 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 25 of 60 25 November 2010 at 9:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
That article was discussed further back in the thread. However as I posted previously:
15 people voted it useful, so I'd count that as positive feedback :-) Edited by Andy E on 25 November 2010 at 9:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5446 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 26 of 60 25 November 2010 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I did the 8 CD foundation course, but not the advanced course. And I have never been able to get the hang of the cases, not that I'd put a lot of energy into it. But that's precisely the point: Here you have given us something for getting a handle on the cases without putting a lot of energy into it, or rather, where the energy comes from the teacher making it understandable and not the student racking his brains.
Because I didn't do the advanced course, I can't comment on what it might be doing to fill gaps. And because I'm not a good speaker of German, I can't comment on accuracy. But for where I am, a mediocre speaker whose German is coming back as he studies Alsatian, I found this to be enormously useful. I printed out a copy, read it on the train and think I have a much better sense of what's going on with the cases, especially as regards the articles. I'd love to see this turned into a couple hours on CDs, because I'll be doing Le Nouvel allemand sans peine after I finish Alsatian, and I'm finding that the spot where L'Alsacien sans peine is weakest is in helping you nail down the case system with ease. Very nice work which is why I commented, early on, that you just needed a smart student and a dumb student and you'd be ready to go! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5782 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 27 of 60 28 November 2010 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I'm so sorry about the delay, but I have re-written the section on adjectives (Including Andy E's suggestion, thanks!), I think it is now much clearer. I have updated the OP to reflect this. I have kept a copy of the OP and will post it at the end when this thread finishes. Please find below the new Lesson 7 (on adjectives).
Lesson 7 We're now going to look at adjectives. Before we do, let's summarise what we know so far. 1)The German Noun System shows the pronoun that the noun replaces by adding an ending to the word for “the” “this” “a” “my” etc 2)The only exceptions are when a noun is BOTH preceded by ein (or kein or a possessive adjective, see above) AND replaces “er” or “es”. Here ein just stays the same...it doesn't add anything. This is the only thing in the entire German Case System that isn't logical, and that you just have to memorise In Summary (* means “careful!”) er = der = dieser = ein(careful!) ;We're going to call this the ER SITUATION es = das = dieses = ein (careful!) We're going to call this the ES SITUATION sie = die = diese = eine The SIE SIUATION ihn = den = diesen = einen The IHN SITUATION ihm = dem = diesem = einem The IHM SITUATION Ihr = der = dieser = einer The IHR SITUATION Ihnen = den(*) = diesen The IHNEN SITUATION Now, back to adjectives: Adjectives in German follow 4 simple rules 1)You usually add “e” unless rules (2), (3) or (4) apply 2)After the verb to be you do NOTHING! Der Hund ist braun (The dog is brown) 3)If the noun replaces ANY pronoun except the original 3 (he/she/it) the adjective adds “en” 4)If the noun is not preceded by some word (such as “the” or “this” or “a”) that shows which pronoun it is replacing then the adjective has to do it These are 4 very simple rules, but I just threw them at you all at once so it might seem more complicated than it is, so let's take them one at a time The first rule states that the normal resting state for the German adjective is to add “e” Think of adding that “e” as putting its clothes on. A German adjective would no more go out without its “e” than you would stark naked. So how would you say: “the good man” Der gute Mann How about: “I love a bad cat”? Ich liebe eine schlechte Katze And finally: “I am drinking this German beer”? Ich trinke dieses deutsche Bier The second rule simply tells you that after the verb to be you do exactly what you do in English...nothing! How do you say: “the dog is brown”, (try to guess brown)- der Hund ist braun What about, “the girl is beautiful” Das Mädchen ist schön OK, if you want you can imagine that adjectives are all married to the verb “to be” and so don't mind being naked around it, or that the verb “to be” is a nudist beach, whatever tickles your fancy, but actually you don't even need to, because this is REALLY easy, absolutely everyone picks it up naturally no matter HOW bad their German, and actually you have already been doing it without realising (see above!), so let's leave it there, and just forget about it. Rule (3) is probably the hardest of the 4, but it's still not THAT difficult to see what is happening here we have to go back to the pronouns. Do you remember I told you that all German nouns are a “he” a “she” or an “it”? If you look them up in a dictionary you will find them with der, die, or das. This is to show what “gender” the noun is, in other words, whether it is a “he” a “she” or an “it”. We're going to call these 3 pronouns (he/she/it) are the ORIGINAL pronouns, they tell you what gender the noun is; and all the other pronouns (they/him/her/them etc) we are going to call the CHANGED pronouns, they tell you SOMETHING ELSE. What that something else actually IS is really quite difficult to describe, but we don't have to because the same thing happens in English, so you know this. Whenever we have a noun that replaces one of the CHANGED pronouns the German adjective takes an “n” on top of the usual “e” to mark the occasion, think of it as wearing a little hat for dress occasions- WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS. Let's look at some examples, to make this clear. the brown dog sees me = der braune Hund sieht mich Here “der Hund” is replacing “er”, which is one of the original pronouns- it tells you that dog is a “he” in German, so the adjective stays in its everyday normal form, with an “e” on the end. but I see the brown dog = ich sehe den braunen Hund braunen to mark the occasion of “er” changing to “ihn” Ihn is a CHANGED pronoun, it doesn't just tell you that a dog is a “he” in German, it tells you more (roughly speaking it tells you that the dog is the one being seen, rather than the one doing the seeing, but you don't need to worry about that), so the adjective gets its little hat out to mark the occasion, and takes “en” on the end: den braunen Hund Let's try a few more to really make it sink in How would you say: “I see the brown House” Ich sehe das braune Haus (das Haus) is replacing “es” (“it”), which is an original pronoun. Nothng happens so “braune” Here's one to think through carefully: How would you say, “I see thebrown cat”? Ich sehe die braune Katze This was tricky, because “she” changes to “her” in English, but as we have seen above in German it stays “sie” (“she”), so we have an original pronoun, so braune You should be getting the hang of it now, so the next few should be easy. How would you say, “I am giving the dog to the small man”? Ich gebe dem kleinen Mann den Hund (dem Mann replaces “ihm” (to him), which is a changed prnoun, so kleinem) and, “I am giving the dog to the beautiful Lady”? Ich gebe der schönen Dame den Hund (der Dame replaces “ihr” (to her), which is a changed pronoun, so schönen) and finally (remembering that a girl is an “it” in German), “I am giving the dog to the beautiful girl” would be? Ich gebe dem schönen Mädchen den Hund (Dem Mädchen replaces “ihm” (to him), which is a changed pronoun, so schönen) One last thing to be aware of, when Germas use “sie” to mean “her” it is the same pronoun, as we mentones above, so, “I love” the beautiful cat” would be? Ich liebe die schöne Katze Because Germans say (literally) “I see she”, so we have an original pronoun here BUT ACHTUNG! When “sie” means “they”, or “them” it is NOT the same pronoun. It no longer means she, it means they! Another way to look at this is that it does NOT show you whether the noun is a he, a she, or an it, because ALL nouns are “sie” in the plural, we say die häuser (the houses) even though it is das Haus, and die Männer (the men) even though it is der Mann. So how would you say, “the small men have just arrived”? Die kleinen Männer sind gerade angekommen here “die Männer” (the men) replace “sie” meaning THEY, and that means it is a changed pronoun, so kleinen how about, “I love the beautiful girls”? Ich liebe die schönen Mädchen Here again, die Mädchen replaces “sie” meaning “they”, so we have a changed pronoun, and that means schönen One last one, using “nett” for nice, try to say: “I have sold the cat to the nice Ladies” Ich habe den netten Damen die Katze verkauft Rule (4) is also really easy...it only says that we just have to carry on playing the same game we have been playing up until now, but if none of our other words are around to do it, then the adjective MUST pick up the slack, no matter what else it was doing, so this rule takes precedence over ALL the above. The German word for beer is “Bier” and it is neuter, so we have an ES SITUATION, so now let's play our game with it: how would you say (about the beer) “it is good” Es ist gut So how about “the beer is good”? Das Bier ist gut because we have es = das = dieses etc So how do you say, “this beer is good”? Dieses Bier ist gut OK and if German is “Deutsch” AND CARRYING ON PLAYING THE SAME GAME, can you figure out how to say: “German beer is good” deutches Bier ist gut Did you get it right. Even if you didn't, as long as you understand where the “es” came from you are doing fine- the es is there to show it's an ES SITUATION. We're just playing the same game as we have been playing with der and dieser etc Let's try another, this time you should easily work it out (if not you need to go back to the start of the Lesson). Wine is “der Wein” so we have an ER SITUATION. How do you say (about the wine): “it is very bad”? Er ist sehr schlecht And “THE wine is very bad”? Der Wein ist sehr schlecht And “THIS wine is very bad?” dieser Wein ist sehr schlecht So now: “German wine is very bad” Deutscher Wein ist sehr schlecht So you see we carry on playing the same game UNLESS there is already an ending on another word to show what situation we are in (what pronoun the noun is replacing), because then there would be no point in the adjective showing it too (German efficiency in action!). An example should make this clear If I say, “dieser Wein ist gut” there is already “er” on the end of “dieser” to show it is an ER SITUATION, so if I wanted to say “this German wine is good” it would be a complete waste of effort to say dieser deutscher Wein, so the adjective just goes back to it's resting state, which is (as I hope you remember!) to add “e”. dieser deutsche Wein ist gut. Only one ting to watch out for. Do you remember what I asked you to memorise- the only two things you have to memorise in the entire German Case System? When “ein” is used before a noun replacing “es” or “er” it doesn't play the game, it stays “ein” Ich habe EIN Haus, EIN Mann hat angerufen etc So here again there is nothing to show that we are in an ES SITUATION, or an ER SITUATION, so the adjective has to pick up the slack So how would you say, “the good man”? Der gute Mann Here we have an “er”situation, but we already know that because of the “der”, so the adjective can relax What about, “A good man”? Ein guter Mann here the “ein” does not show that we are in an ER SITUATION, so the adjective has to do it. Did you get this right? Even if you didn't, as long as you got the “AHA” feeling, and understand WHY it was “guter” you are doing fine! You should get this one quite easily (if not, you need to go through this section again). How would you say, “I am drinking this German beer”? Ich trinke dieses deutsche Bier Das Bier, so we have an ES situation. Now try to say, “I am drinking A German beer” Ich trinke ein deutsches Bier Ein doesn't show that it is an ES situation, so the adjective (deutsch) has to- deutsches And that's how adjectives work in German, or you can memorise 50+ endings and when to use them ha ha! Edited by Random review on 28 November 2010 at 10:25pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5782 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 28 of 60 28 November 2010 at 4:16am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This is great feedback- real proof that this patch to the course makes sense to people who are struggling with cases. I STRONGLY recommend you do the Advanced Course, though! It is well worth the money (assuming you can't get it at your local Library) and will take up only 5-10 hours of your time! With that and a basic understanding of cases (which I hope this thread provides), you'll be ready for what really is hard about German (learning genders and plurals of nouns), which I suspect Assimil will be great for. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 29 of 60 09 December 2010 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
None taken. I looked at the thread when it kicked off, but didn't have time to read it all (you've clearly put in a lot of work!) and meant to come back to it, but forgot. I can't look at it now (just finishing my lunch then back to work) but I'll try to have a look over it at the weekend and provide proper feedback. Cheers, C. Edit: PS. No, I don't speak German. I did the MT Foundation course but never started on the Advanced. I really should pick it up again soon.... Edited by Cainntear on 09 December 2010 at 2:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 30 of 60 09 December 2010 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I'm not sure if it's a good idea listing what people should already know. Far better is to do as you do next.
An example in English proving how we already know this -- excellent.
The student is prompted to recall the word forms spontaneously -- no clues. Excellent. But then...
Thomas very rarely reminded students by telling them what they should know -- he prompted them to recall words and patterns. Reminding students by simply telling them the words again isn't very effective, as in real language we have to recall the words that we need without any reminders.
Why did you tell us what "ihm" was, but then proceed to revise "es" before working with "ihm"?
You've now explained it twice before actually using it, which should be unnecessary. You also then proceed to prompt for "to him" after this second explanation
...before finally getting to a "to it" example:
OK, so maybe I'm stretching this explanation out a bit, but a big part of Thomas's philosophy was about not needing to remember, so he didn't like leaving any sort of gap between the explanation and the initial practice, because the student would be forced to try to remember during the gap. The most way MT to handled this (IMO) would be to be revising the "ihm" as "to him" so that the student had a chance to recall it, and only then introduce the fact that "to it" is the same, before prompting for a few examples.
This is quite divergent from MT philosophy -- Thomas didn't like introducing things that didn't actually mean anything to the student. One of the problems with a lot of grammar study is that it explains structures, but doesn't connect with meaning on a personal level. At this stage, I don't know what the sentence could mean, so I can't learn it meaningfully, and by saying "as you will see", you've set up a cliffhanger: it's now forcing me to remember what you have said for later. This is also something that I'm not going to get to practise for a while. Better then to leave this until later when it can be introduced once it actually means something to the student, and when you're going to be able to practise it properly.
I'm not a fan of mnemonics, particularly for something fundamental. Mnemonics are "telling", which is a poor substitute for "teaching". It also means that you're again giving the words before you're ready to practice them, and the student is going to be trying to remember again. Maybe you should give them one by one and make sure that each one gets practised enough to be learnt, but instead you only give one example of each one before moving onto the next, and you have to give the article every time.
Now, you're onto something here:
It's a great pattern, but you've rushed it. You're still presenting the rule rather than teaching it. Start instead with one definite article, and practise it a few times. Then compare with the pronoun. Next go for the next pronoun, and point out the change in the previous pronoun, and try to see if the student can recreate this. Practice with a couple of examples. Same again with the third and fourth. Now that the student is familiar with the forms in use, you can describe the general pattern more clearly, because you're just firming up known information. Now, here again you are giving words that the student already knows (I think -- are you saying what's in the brackets?):
Why not prompt the student to recall the pronouns themselves rather than handing them over on a plate? This may seem like an irrelevant point, but by giving us the pronoun, you let us engage in a little "word-juggling" -- ie we can fiddle with the form without thinking about the meaning. If you only give "she" then when the student recalls "sie", we are guaranteed to have both the form and meaning fresh in our minds.
Now this is just a nitpick, but that's not very MT because you're placing responsibility on the student. You seem to be open to feedback, so don't fall into the trap of passing the buck to the student or your course will never get to the level it deserves
Excellent excellent excellent. No extraneous explanations, just walking the student through the patterns.
I'm not sure this is close enough to really be worth guessing at. (I also think you chose a bad time to introduce a new verb as it risks distracting the student's attention from the grammar point at hand.) But looking at the next part, I'd say that you have to consider this a second pattern of changes (even if only a variant on the main pattern)
...but now this is definitely a second pattern
I disagree. If "ihn" is "den" and "ihm" is "dem", then "ihr" logically should be "der". That's why I say that this is a second pattern. Don't point out anything that makes it look unusual, the more regular the better, I say!
I'm not clear on what you mean hear by "in this case". Am I correct in assuming you mean grammatical case? That's a term most MT learners won't understand -- you need to show your meaning by analogy to what the student does know, and that's the pronouns and articles, which means you can't just throw this in and say "we'll do it later". You need to practise it so it sticks. If you're not ready to practise it, don't introduce it!
You're going too quick. Thomas didn't present full rules like this. He normally spent time on the first item in the set before introducing the idea of the rule. There's a little too much covered in a short space of time above, and that leaves everything a little muddy and hazy, and again, the learner will be tempted to slip into "word-juggling".
I'm confused (probably because I don't know German) -- is the house in the nominative here?
The description isn't clear enough to start off with. I assume this is the accusative case, from the examples that follow. Anyway, I'm not sure this explanation is needed. Thomas didn't bother telling students when not to use a particular language point, instead relying on the examples used to show the context, and then presenting another form separately with no fuss and no "this is X, that is Y". So how about... How would you say, "He has bitten me"? (answer) And "I have bitten him”? Ich habe ihn gebissen OK, so now if you want to say that you have bitten a dog, we have to say "einen" instead of ein, because in German these things change depending on whether they are doing or being done to. So, "I have bitten a dog"...? (answer) But wait... what was “I have bitten this dog”? (answer) Einen... Diesen... it's those endings again. ...and so the rule emerges from the first example, and you can now ask the students to guess at the remaining forms of "ein". But just doing a very rigid one-of-each makes it feel very stiff and artificial.
Again, you're telling, not teaching, because you're giving me information but not getting me to manipulate it. It doesn't matter how well you tell me, if you don't give me the opportunity to use it, it's not going to stick.
Ah, now I see. Trust me, that was a mistake. By throwing it in where you did, you made it seem like it was the same case, rather than an identical form in a different case. You presented two different things as one, making it harder for me to understand the distinction with what I was supposed to be looking at in the next line.
Again, and I can't say this enough, don't tell me anything until you're ready to teach me it. And don't, please, ask me to do this.
* It's quite difficult for some people to motivate themselves to make arbitrary sentences, and you can spend as much time deciding what to say as saying it. This isn't a matter of being lazy, it's a matter of not really having a good reason to do something. A course needs to motivate its students, not rely on them coming to the table ready and able to do anything - Thomas new that. * If you make mistakes you'll never know because there's no answer key when there's no questions. * You can end up falling into word-juggling again. In particular, the ordering of Thomas's prompts ensured that you weren't able to just recycle lots of the previous sentence and manipulate it into a new one, but once you're doing self-directed sentences, you're liable to fall into this pattern. OK, so that was a lot, but you did ask!!! And again, the fact that I could be specific is only because of the amount of material and the quality of it, so please don't take this feedback too negatively. Edited by Cainntear on 09 December 2010 at 8:24pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5782 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 31 of 60 09 December 2010 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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@Cainntear: I'll look forward to that- the sooner this gets tightened up, the sooner a pdf etc can be made. Regarding your German, I thought you spoke it, but maybe you should leave the MT Advanced Course until Nobel brings out a German course so that you can do a proper comparison! Just to explain, then, my "victim of the verb" comment in the O.P. was because (amazingly!) that is how they chose to start teaching cases in the Vocab Course. Why take something perfectly clear that we already have in English (albeit only for pronouns and who/whom) and explain it with a vague concept like "victim of the verb"? There is nothing in German that is truly alien to the anglophone mind (unlike, say Ser and Estar in Spanish/Portuguese, or the two past tenses in the Romance languages- to say nothing of more exotic languages!), so why not keep things clear? Edited by Random review on 09 December 2010 at 8:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5782 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 32 of 60 09 December 2010 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Just got your feedback and am very happy with it. I knew I could rely on you not to sugar-coat things. This is exactly why I was disappointed that you weren't on this thread! I think you are right in most of your points, the only thing I disagree with is splitting it up into two patterns. That said what you say here
Thanks for taking the time to do this, it's a real help. I'm going to get cracking on a new (hopefully penultimate) draft this weekend, so if anyone else wishes to do what Cainntear did now is a good time, please. Thanks to all. Edited by Random review on 09 December 2010 at 8:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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