Das Fenster ist groß

Today, let me just give you a taste of what speaking/learning German is like. (Uncle Brain, you are two steps ahead of everyone reading this post...) There are entire books dedicated to deterring one from the German language written for many reasons. Mark Twain was one of these authors. He has an essay titled "The Awful German Language". He was also fluent in German. That alone should be evidence.

I was discussing this with my host family when Elke quickly jumped up, or as fast as someone in crutches can, and ran off to get a book. (She had knee surgery two days ago.) It's titled Nothing for Ungood... and let me just read you a little of it:

     "...The German language is something that must be learned from birth...(I'm translating this from German, give me a break...) In German there are three indefinite articles: der, die, and das. One must know, of these three, every conjugation of the article in every case. For example: German.
Nominativ  der   die   das  die (plural)
Genitiv       des   der  des   der
Dativ          dem der  dem  den
Akkusativ   den  die  das    die
Now let's look at that same chart, in terms of English:

Nominative the   the  the  the  the (plural)
Genitive      the   the  the  the  the
Dative         the  the  the  the   the
Accusative  the   the  the  the  the

Do we see the differences?

In all honesty, who wants to learn a language with 16 possibilities for the? There is also 16 possibilities for a (with English only two, a or an) and 32 different ways to end an adjective! In English there is no way to end an adjective. We don't say, "Wow, what a great*interject masculine ending* shed!"

For an English plural you only need stick a s at the end of word. Just slap it on. In German you can add an s or perhaps an e, or maybe two little points above a letter in the middle of the word, or maybe en, or it could be the case that you add nothing at all and you just must know that it is plural. ..."

Sounds fun, right?... Thought so. I bet you're all happy you took Spanish in high school now.