Homework 1

Homework 1:

First homework assignment will actually be in English.

Look up the following linguistic terms in English, even if you know them, and be prepared to identify them in English sentences:

definite article
indefinite article
nominative
accusative
dative
possessive
subject
direct object
indirect object
possessive adjective

The purpose of this assignment is to help to ensure that you understand the mechanisms of the parts of speech in your native language. They often function very similarly in English to the way they function in Deitsch, but English instruction seems to have an aversion to using the terms that are commonly used in the instruction of other languages.

Have some sentences of your own on-hand and be prepared to identify the case (will be the hardest for English speakers to do, but don't stress out!), the role of words, etc.

For example, if I were to write out:

"I gave my cat some food."

I would identify the following per the homework assignment, omitting verbs, adjectives:

I - nominative, subject of the sentence

my - possessive adjective, dative case, describing "cat"

cat - dative case, indirect object

some - (in this case, adverb functioning as a partitive indefinite article describing "food")

food - accusative case, direct object

In Deitsch, this sentence would come out as:

"Ich hab meinre Katz deel Fresse gewwe."

As with English, word order is critical in Deitsch. Reversing word order in either language can cause a lot of confusion.

"Michelle paid Larry" does not mean the same thing as "Larry paid Michelle." The same applies in Deitsch.

Unlike English, though, all nouns have grammatical gender, and that gender is best reflected in the definite article that goes with the noun.

der, die, es and plural die all translate to "the" in the nominative and accusative cases.
'm, der, 'm and plural de all translate to "the" in the dative case.

You'll notice that "'m" appears twice in the dative... That is because the masculine and neuter grammatical genders often follow the same pattern.

You will learn more about these as we progress, but the key point here is ALWAYS LEARN THE ARTICLE/GRAMMATICAL GENDER WITH A NOUN.

der Urglaawe (masculine, singular, nominative and accusative; German pitfall: the accusative is different from German!!!)

die Braucherei (feminine, singular, nominative and accusative)

es Land (neuter, singular, nominative and accusative)

die Deitsche (the Deitsch people): (plural, nominative and accusative)

Also: GRAMMATICAL GENDER AND PHYSICAL GENDER/IDENTITY ARE NOT THE SAME. While nouns usually do line up with the dualistic physical genders, it is not always the case because suffixes frequently define the grammatical gender. A witch ("die Hex") is grammatically feminine, and any person can be "die Hex" and be described by this grammatically feminine noun regardless of gender identity or physical sex.

We'll pick things up from here...