I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by German! I’m in A1, the most basic level, so I know that things can only get easier from here, but right now, German is SCARY.

But let me tell you in brief what I’ve actually absorbed in my german course about the German language: it’s complicated and there are no rules. I’ll probably look back at this one day and laugh, but here’s what I’ve picked up so far:

• There are three different genders of nouns (masculine, feminine, and neuter).
• There are four different cases for those nouns (nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative).
• There are three possible definite articles in the nominative (der, die, das) and two possible indefinite articles (ein, eine).
• There are no rules to tell when a noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter.
• In the plural (in the nominative), the definite article is always „die,“ and there is no indefinite article.
• However, there are nine possible ways to make a noun in the nominative plural.
• And there are no rules.
• And the adjectives have to match.

So, basically… in my week of class, I’ve learned some vocabulary that seems infinitely dependent on other factors in the sentence and whose gender identity is beyond either good or evil. I long for a Romance language! At least with Italian or Spanish all you have to do is take a noun, take a verb, string them together with some vocabulary and call it a day. I guess I could look on the positive side… at least I’m not trying to learn a tonal language or something outside my own alphabet. Now that’s intimidating.