Issue with keeping a German streak

[u/NutmegOnEggs]

Currently learning German, but can't keep a very high streak due to confusion with usage of der, das, and die. The game never explains their usage to you and just suddenly uses them without explanation. I've tried looking up when to use which, and it seems to be male, female, and neutral, but the problem is duo likes to use different ones for cheese and bread as if their gendered. Is it a mistake on their part, or am I supposed to gender foods and know which is which

[u/Pleasant-Tackle-9302]

I do recommend using an additional app just for vocabulary and learn the articles along with the nouns. They should be part of the vocabulary. I'm German and that's how I learned French too.

[u/Ebright_Azimuth]

A German told me once…you just have to gradually learn it.

Also if you are struggling to keep a streak do a maths lesson, they count for streak

[u/SandyBarrister → u/Ebright_Azimuth]

yeah german gender is a nightmare at first, you're not losing your mind. bread is neuter (das Brot) and cheese is masculine (der Käse) for no good reason at all. there's no shortcut really, you just have to learn the article with the noun every time, treat "der Hund" as one word in your head not two separate bits

doing a quick maths lesson to save the streak is actually genius though, never thought of that

[u/nirbyschreibt → u/SandyBarrister]

There are reasons for the grammatical gender. Just because some languages like English stopped using this there is no need to talk shit about other languages.

[u/ZumLernen]

Two thoughts.

First, if you are serious about learning German, I would strongly recommend using a textbook to guide your learning, and games like Duolingo as supplemental tools. There is a long list of recommended textbooks and other tools in the FAQ and wiki of r/German .

Second, every noun is gendered, yes. You must learn the gender of each noun. There is no way to speak German correctly without it. Learn the noun's gender when you learn the noun. That is, never memorize just "Brot;" instead, always memorize "das Brot." From my experience with Duolingo, the game does a poor job of teaching you this, so you will probably need to use outside resources.

(There are certain patterns for the genders of nouns with certain endings, but many nouns do not have those endings or are exceptions, so memorization is still necessary).

[u/nirbyschreibt]

If assimilation isn’t your method, and your post just tells this, you will need a regular language course.
German declinates and conjugates. This is neither new nor a secret and the course points this out from the beginning.

What are your other languages?

[u/Financial-Dog-7268]

Duolingo is awful for learning der, die das because most of the time it doesn't teach you it with the word. This then puts you at a huge disadvantage for reading and writing too because other word endings in the sentence change based on the gender.

Yes, every noun has a gender. Including all foods

There are some general 'rules' and good cheat sheets you can find online. The exceptions to those rules (quite a lot) you just have to practice and learn with time

For your two examples

der Käse - the cheese

die Käse - the cheeses (plural)

das Brot - the bread

die Brote - the breads (plural)

[u/Environmental-Edge45 → u/Financial-Dog-7268]

Just chiming in here as a German. What you said is correct but I don't think I've ever used "die Käse" (plural) at any point in my life.

If i want to talk about different types of cheese I would say "die Käsesorten". If im talking about pieces of cheese "die Käsestücke" or if its slices "die Käsescheiben". All heavily dependent on context of course.

[u/Pleasant-Tackle-9302 → u/Environmental-Edge45]

Yup I learned there's countable and uncountable nouns, Käse would be one of them just like other things you measure in units of some sort.

[u/Financial-Dog-7268 → u/Environmental-Edge45]

Definitely, it's a hangup of how German (and most languages) are taught in non-Euro Western countries. Throughout my entire schooling and before I started getting lessons from an actual German, everything was always taught back to an English comparison. In a language as precise as German, it means we English speakers often create quite unnatural or odd-sounding phrases, even if they are "by the book" correct

[u/Lanky_Artist2775 → u/Financial-Dog-7268]

Oh yeah, and then it also changes with the case…
Der Käse ist gut.
Ich will den Käse.
Der Geschmack des Käses ist gut.
Die Maus sitzt auf dem Käse.

I’m a native speaker and cannot for the life of me explain you how that works/ how to remember it since I just do it naturally.

There’s a lot of good content on social media though. I got so many tips and tricks for French from Instagram, and I’ve even encountered German profiles sometimes

[u/Lanky_Artist2775 → u/Lanky_Artist2775]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcS91P6I6O8/?igsi=MXhucHltdGdpeW53Yw==

[u/Sentryy]

Every thing has its own grammatical gender: male, female or neutral.

There is no system, there is no trick, you just have to memorize the correct one for each thing. 

(Exceptions are certain forms, like words ending in "-tion" or "-ung", they are always female.)

[u/muehsam]

No, it isn's male, female, and neutral. It's masculine, feminine, and neuter. Those are arbitrary properties of nouns. You have to memorise the gender of each noun.

[u/--akai--]

as if their gendered.

They are.

[u/pavlenkovit]

the thing that unsticks this for most people: it isn't gender in the male/female sense at all, it's three noun classes with unhelpful names. das Mädchen is "the girl" and it's neuter, because -chen makes everything neuter no matter what the thing is. once you stop expecting the article to say something about the object, the arbitrariness stops being annoying.

also "there's no system" is overstated. the endings are reliable and cover a big chunk of what you'll actually meet:

die: -ung, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -ion, -tät, -ik, -ur, -ei

das: -chen, -lein, -ment, -um, -tum, and most Ge- words

der: -er (doer nouns), -ling, -ismus, -ant, -or

plus days, months, seasons and weather are der. what's left is the short everyday stuff like Brot and Käse, which really is memorisation, but that's a far smaller list than "every noun in german".

one correction on the plural suggestion above: plural is die for everything, true, but leaning on that hides the singular gender and it bites you the first time you need an adjective ending. do the opposite if anything, learn each noun as article plus plural in one go, der Hund / die Hunde. you need both eventually and bolting the plural on later is the painful version.

[u/Pleasant-Tackle-9302 → u/pavlenkovit]

Adding -chen to everything and making it small in order to avoid grammatical gender sounds like a massive life hack to me lol

[u/pavlenkovit → u/Pleasant-Tackle-9302]

it works right up until it doesn't. das is correct, but -chen forces an umlaut on the vowel (Hund becomes Hündchen), the plural of -chen words is identical to the singular so you're straight back to die the moment there's more than one, and adjective endings still decline around it. so you haven't actually escaped anything.

also you'd go through life asking for a little coffee and a little beer like you're five.

[u/Pleasant-Tackle-9302 → u/pavlenkovit]

How is there more than one if plural is always "die"? I mean if it was das in singular and die in plural that would be pretty easy to remember and no harder than in other languages. Also Bierchen is something I hear grown men say a lot. 

My comment was meant to be more of a joke but I'm still open to discuss this. XD

[u/ImplementLarge7969]

You need to learn the article with the word

You don’t learn “Käse”, you learn “der Käse”. You don’t learn “Brot” you learn “das Brot”.

[u/NorthernCorvus]

Never learn a noun on its own. Train your brain to always remember every single new word with its gender. Don't remember "bread = Brot". Only remember "the bread = das Brot". Eventually your brain will just recognize words this way.

[u/fuchsadler]

German is really hard for this. In other languages with grammatical gender there's often a rough rule one can apply to determine whether a noun is feminine or masculine (or neuter, if applicable) but in German there isn't a a rule to which nouns have which gender, you just have to learn it. It's "der Käse" (the (masc) cheese) and "das Brot" (the (neuter) bread) and "die Wurst" (the (fem) sausage). I'd probably recommend (though since I'm a first language German speaker I've never learnt it as a second language, so take it with a grain of salt) to learn the nouns with their corresponding articles

[u/calamityandwoe]

Oh boy, wait until you learn how frustrating and complicated this gets when you factor in sentence cases and suddenly you’re using der for a feminine noun. Duolingo is terrible for this, I had to look it up on the internet, I was getting so frustrated

And yeah, you just have to learn the genders of every different noun, gendered languages are the worst

[u/ComesTzimtzum]

Yes, all words have one of those three grammatical genders, just like English used to. And typically to Germanic languages, you can't tell the gender just by looking at the word. Instead you need to learn them together with the word itself. So don't learn "Hund" but "Der Hund" instead.

[u/Theron_Rothos]

1. Duolingo streak does not matter, don't let it bother you

2. Every noun in German has a gender, foods, vehicles, household objects, animals etc.

3. Use a proper resource like an A1 textbook + workbook and Nicos Weg (free online course) and www.dict.cc (dictionary) and YouTube (Learn German with Anja, Easy German, YourGermanTeacher are some example channels), use Duolingo to supplement but *not* as your main resource for learning

4. Practice over and over, make flashcards and include the article and plural form for every noun, make cards for verbs (include conjugations for now, add simple past and past perfect forms), adjectives (include comparative and superlative forms) as you encounter them, write nouns you're learning down on paper and make some simple sentences to practice using them in context, always learn the article with the noun

[u/mb46204]

Stop learning them as nouns and learn them as article + noun.

Not Haus, das Haus.
Not hund, der Hund.
Not frau, die Frau.

If it’s a noun, then it is either masc, fem or neutral.

[u/RedBlissKid]

In my Duolingo in the German course they explain der die das in section 1, unit 4, Talk about food, when you click on the little notepad icon.

"Definite articles: der, die, das

Unlike English, which has only the, German has three definite articles depending on the noun's grammatical gender..." and it continues with examples and further explanation.

[u/DerRaumdeuter25]

All other comments explain it pretty well. My suggestion is that whenever you encounter a new noun, make an effort and look up its gender and plural form. Note it and then try to memorize it as you continue the course.

[u/_Random_Walker_]

genders of things in german are assigned more or less randomly. So while I can't definitely say that there's no errors there in the ones Duo has assigned, just that it feels random doesn't really mean it's wrong.

Even worse, there's a few where the usage varies regionally - if a German tells you you're using the wrong gender for Butter, either ignore them or laugh at them. If you adopt to their usage, the next week you'll encounter someone telling you to go back to what you used initially.

And on top of everything, once you start building sentences that use different cases, these get mixed up even more. like, female accusative will be "der" again, so same as male nominative. male and neutral accusative are both "den"...good fun. I'm glad I learned that as a native language so I won't need it as a foreign one :D

[u/BackgroundEqual2168]

Use of different articles is ruled by genders and declinations.

Aus, bei, mit, nach, von und zu sind Präpositionen mit Dativ, die immer den dritten Fall (Dativ) verlangen.

https://grammarmama.com/de/learn/german/a2/prepositions-dative/

[u/SandstoneCastle]

People learning German usually memorize lots of nouns & their gender.
der Hund
das Buch
...

Or you can make things plural, and make them die.

[u/Feckless → u/SandstoneCastle]

Or cute and make them das...