Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5440 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French
| Message 1 of 20 11 June 2009 at 10:53am | IP Logged |
I've been learning German for a while, though mostly through exposure so despite having intermediate listening comprehension and being able to express myself in German in an understandable manner quite quickly, my grammar is well... special =P
I recently started trying to make my exposure more regular and started using a supermemo course that tests you on grammar. For some of the questions, I had to fill in the articles and adjectives but found it a bit confusing.
The correct answer was: Julia hat viele Haustiere: einen Hasen, zwei Hunde, einige weiße Mäuse und eine Katze.
Now it doesn't sound weird to me, but it isn't consistent with the endings that I looked up here:
http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa030298.htm
http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa033098.htm
On those pages all the plural endings for adjectives are -en so if anybody could explain why viele doesn't have an -n at the end or the same for einige weiße then I would be incredibly grateful =)
p.s. Ignore the language profile, there was an error when I addded the languages. It says I'm native in German and won't let me change it, but I'm definitely not!!
Edited by WillH on 11 June 2009 at 11:34am
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Recht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5596 days ago 241 posts - 270 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB1
| Message 2 of 20 11 June 2009 at 1:55pm | IP Logged |
here's the only resource you'll need, I think -
http://www.canoo.net/services/Controller?
dispatch=inflection&input=gut&features=(Cat+A)&country=D&loo kup=caseInSensitive
We used the adjective "gut". The tables should be pretty self-explanatory.
hope this helps,
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Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5440 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French
| Message 3 of 20 11 June 2009 at 2:02pm | IP Logged |
Yeah, that's amazing!
Am I right in understanding it that the reason why I was confused above was because I didn't know about the different list of endings used when there's no article? I know it sounds like a stupid question but I just want to make sure as it's important to me that I can learn this thing properly.
Thanks Recht, that resource is amazing =)
Edited by WillH on 11 June 2009 at 2:10pm
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Recht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5596 days ago 241 posts - 270 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB1
| Message 4 of 20 11 June 2009 at 2:27pm | IP Logged |
WillH wrote:
Yeah, that's amazing!
Am I right in understanding it that the reason why I was confused above was because I
didn't know about the different list of endings used when there's no article? I know it
sounds like a stupid question but I just want to make sure as it's important to me that
I can learn this thing properly.
Thanks Recht, that resource is amazing =) |
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most likely. Just learn what makes a noun (or pronoun I suppose) a subject, direct
object or indirect object,
and which prepositions require accusative i.e. "fuer den Hund" or dative " mit dem
Bus" and you should be fine.
If you don't know, Dict.Leo http://dict.leo.org/ is a good resource, but also get a
Langenscheidt's dictionary, since it's more precise, if you don't have one already.
Edited by Recht on 11 June 2009 at 2:27pm
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Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5440 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French
| Message 5 of 20 11 June 2009 at 2:48pm | IP Logged |
I understand the case system and now by heart which case follows each preposition, it was just that one the link you sent me there was a table for endings when there is no article and I didn't realise this set of endings existed.
Thanks again
Will
And leo.org is a fantastic resource, I found it out from my German friends who use it to write half their English essays ;)
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zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6167 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 6 of 20 11 June 2009 at 6:13pm | IP Logged |
Read a grammar book cover to cover.
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Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5440 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French
| Message 7 of 20 11 June 2009 at 8:08pm | IP Logged |
I don't need to, I'm going through a course that tests me on grammar and getting quite a lot of exposure. I new for example that I should say viele but I didn't understand exactly when or why, my main problem at the moment is my lack of correct declinations and genders in my German which I'm working on.
I'm lucky enough to have 20 Germans who live with me so I have no shortage of people to point out my mistakes and I'm getting plenty of exposure =)
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ixtok Newbie Australia Joined 6092 days ago 29 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 8 of 20 11 June 2009 at 10:37pm | IP Logged |
WillH wrote:
I recently started trying to make my exposure more regular and started using a supermemo course that tests you on grammar.
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Can you tell me more about this supermemo course?
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