My student Dea (not the real name), a Dr. phil. (doctor philosophiae) degree holder from University of Ilmenau, who is now a lecturer at a private university in Karawaci, is so diligent as she learns German again. Due to her last study she has lived in Germany for several years. However, she doesn't want to forget the German although she lives in Indonesia now.
To support her learning process she bought a German - Indonesian & Indonesian - German dictionary in Jakarta. The book looks so nice. At the bookstore she didn't notice any peculiarity in that dictionary.
Time goes by.
Someday she just wanted to use that new dictionary. How disappointing! She didn't find any gender information of the nouns. The dictionary is useless! You cannot make German sentences correctly if you don't know the gender of the nouns.
There are 3 gender types: masculine, with his article "der", feminine with her article "die" and neutral with its article "das". These grammatical articles will change in the sentences according to the grammatical cases.
There are 4 grammatical cases in German: Nominativ (first case), Genitiv (second case), Dativ (third case) and Akkusativ (fourth case). The changes of the grammatical articles according to the grammatical cases are as follows:
masculine: der (Nominativ), des (Genitiv), dem (Dativ), den (Akkusativ)
feminine: die (Nominativ), der (Genitiv), der (Dativ), die (Akkusativ)
neutral: das (Nominativ), des (Genitiv), dem (Dativ), das (Akkusativ)
These changes are called "Artikeldeklination" in German.
I give you some examples so that you can see the differences.
the noun: der Pfarrer, gender type: masculine (means "reverend" in English)
Nominativ: der Pfarrer ist nett. (The reverend is nice.)
Genitiv: das ist das Auto des Pfarrers. (This is the car of the reverend.)
Dativ: Frau Sihombing spricht mit dem Pfarrer. (Ms / Mrs Sihombing speaks with the reverend / is speaking with the reverend.)
Akkusativ: Frau Sihombing laedt den Pfarrer zum Kaffee ein. (Ms / Mrs Sihombing treats the reverend a cup of coffee.)
Now, how can Dea make German sentences if there are no gender informations of the nouns in that expensive new dictionary she has bought? It is really a useless dictionary. Poor Dea.
You have read text 15.
Please read text 16: He Lies!
Back to text 14: He Calls Me "Inang"
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