Thankful for "The"

Every weekday I have class. From 8-12, I learn words, grammar, sounds, and many other things. It has been almost four months of studying. I can say that I have learned a lot. However, I can also say that German is hard! Everything has its specific form and you have to know them or you sound like an idiot. There are also so many exceptions and irregulars, especially with verbs that it is almost impossible to keep track. Often I feel like I am understanding how, but never understanding, exactly why. It's frustrating!

This past week we have been learning about the akkusativ and dativ case of articles and personal pronouns. This is yet another aspect of German that I can do, but often wonder if I really understand. Let me explain a little. In English, for standard pronouns we have I, you, me, he, she, it, we, they. We also have possesive pronouns: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs. Of course, we also have articles: the, a, an. For the second and latter of the above, German has so many different forms, based on the verb you use or what other nouns are in the sentence. This is called Declension. As far as I had known, we English speakers do not have this or at least not much of it. I did some research and it seems that is mostly true, although as a Germanic language, English once did have some declension of number, case, and gender, today there is hardly but a trace of this left. However, as an example of how complex German is I will give a small example. In particular, I want to talk about the latter.

Most of us learned the word "ball" at an early age. We see balls on television, we see and hear them in our books and movies, we play with them with our parents, siblings, and friends,  we chase these colorful, round objects around the house.... When referring to ball we learn to say, the indefinite, "a ball" or the definite "the ball". Furthermore, we can have "a ball", "the ball" in singular, or "balls", "the balls" in plural. Most kids also learn names for people. We'll take "girl" for our example. Here the articles are the same: "a girl", "the girl" for singular, or "girls", "the girls" for plural.

My teacher has said over and over that for those with English as mother tongue, learning German, particularly, the articles and declention of articles is difficult. She's right. Want to know why? Take a look at this table:

Above are all the different forms of "the" and "a/an". Yes...there are that many. Let me just say that by now, I am very thankful for "the"!!

I am not going to explain the uses of these because frankly, I think it would bore you, and honestly, I do not even know how to use them all myself. Yet, as difficult as it is, I find that I really enjoy grammar. Granted there are exceptions, but for the majority there are rules and laws that are defined; there is a right and wrong. Grammar is mostly black and white. I love that. In a way I see grammar as a treasure hunt, or a puzzle. I love finding the rule and figuring out how to put a sentence together and why it is built. Yes, there are 16 different ways to say "the" in German (probably even more than this chart shows!), but at least one can be specific! I'm thankful for "the" and "the" and "der" and "das" and "die" and "den" and "dem" and.....