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How to memorize noun genders | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| miKonnen Bilingual Diglot Groupie Canada mikonnen.blogsp Joined 6633 days ago 54 posts - 57 votes  Speaks: English*, Cantonese* Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 1 of 51 03 March 2006 at 1:28am | IP Logged |
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If you hate the genders of nouns as much as I do, then you'd definitely want to give my 'method' a stab.
Try thinking of the gender with logic: for example, why is the "die Grippe" (the flu, in German) feminine? Try thinking of it with [biased] logic... Maybe it's because people like to blame bad things (like the flu) on women! (Please, no offence meant) Another example is "la musique" (the music, in french). Although this one isn't all that hard, you can try thinking the arts and music as a very expressive, soft, and soothing thing, and relate it to women - expressivem, soft, and soothing. The good thing about this and other memory hooks is that they don't last long and you're left with the word and its gender. Hopefully, I havn't offended anyone... Have fun studying the beautiful languages =) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| awb Groupie United States Joined 6656 days ago 46 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 2 of 51 03 March 2006 at 6:53am | IP Logged |
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I don't know about French so much.. but I'm studying German, and simply watching movies will help you, and when you get into adjectives, you'll remember better from the endings. And throughout the day, if something in German pops into my head, but I'm unsure of the gender of a noun that I know, I just quickly look up the gender. Such repitition should ensure that you know the genders.
And of course, a bunch of the common endings are feminine: -ung (you can remove -en from a verb and add -ung pretty freely to form these nouns; e.g.: begrüßen > die Begrüßung) -keit (these tend to be added to adjectives; e.g.: frei > die Freiheit; möglich > die Möglichkeit) -heit (these tend to be added to adjectives, just like keit, but keit is much more common) e/ie: ususally feminine, but not always. And in compound nouns, the gender comes from the last noun of course. There are more feminine only endings, and of course masculine and neuter endings, but IMO, it's really not worth the time it takes to memorize them. After a while, you'll probably develop the feeling for them, but don't spend the time to know them all, unless it's subconsciously, through language feeling. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6643 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 3 of 51 03 March 2006 at 11:00am | IP Logged |
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German nouns with -er or -es ending are masculine or neutral, nouns ending with -e are feminine (there are always exceptions, though.)
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| Walshy Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6724 days ago 335 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German | Message 4 of 51 04 March 2006 at 7:50am | IP Logged |
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Someone said that they use coloured flash cards to help learn genders, e.g. put masculine nouns on red cards, feminine on yellow, and neuter on white. I haven't tried it myself, but it sounds like a great idea.
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| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6622 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 5 of 51 04 March 2006 at 11:21am | IP Logged |
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For German there are certain rules. A grammar book will help you there. Most words will not fall into this regular category, however, so you will have to learn them.
Some hooks are always useful. You could for example imagine three different worlds, and place words respectively. I have successfully used different colours on my flash cards. One colour for each gender... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6643 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 6 of 51 05 March 2006 at 9:58am | IP Logged |
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I used to mark unknown German words with different colours - yellow for masculine, red for feminine and green for neutral. This was very useful.
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| crackpot Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6083 days ago 144 posts - 178 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 7 of 51 30 May 2010 at 1:44am | IP Logged |
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I'm not sure why we wouldn't use blue for masculine, pink for feminine and say yellow for
neuter, if learning German. I used pink and blue to color a map of the world for French and found that large regions of the world have countries that are overwhelmingly masculine or feminine. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 8 of 51 30 May 2010 at 4:01am | IP Logged |
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For myself personally
I picture all feminine nouns with a girl. All neutral nouns with water, and all masculine nouns on fire. Examples die Milch - (a girl with a glass of milk) das Auto - A car running through a puddle der Mann - A guy on fire :D 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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