Image description:
Picture with a slightly run-down looking church’s front door on the right side of the picture, and on the left a section of the church’s wall and a graffiti-covered dumpster in front of it.
On the wall is graffitied a 4x4 table with the columns labeled from left to right “M”, “F”, “N” and “PL” – for the masculine, feminine, neuter and plural forms. The rows are labeled from top to bottom “nom”, “akk”, “dat”, “gen” for the nominative, accusative, dative and genetive cases. The corresponding definite articles are written out in the table each in its own spot (I hope screen readers don’t barf with tables):
| M | F | N | PL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NOM | DER | DIE | DAS | DIE |
| AKK | DEN | DIE | DAS | DIE |
| DAT | DEM | DER | DEM | DEN |
| GEN | DES | DER | DES | DER |
To be honest, I have no idea how anyone can memorise that. As a native speaker you hardly ever really think about it, you just know. But looking at the table it just seems like complete chaos, even to me.
It really is. Once we got past nominative and accusative in school (which were hard enough coming from English which has no gender), and suddenly this chart was busted out, I realized German was always going to be a guessing game for me. I can only hope the meaning is clear enough with completely wrong genders and word endings. I find I do better hearing whole phrases repeatedly than learning word by word, but seeing this helps with knowing why a phrase is worded a certain way.