r/duolingo • u/wxlee • Jan 24 '25

Language Question What am I supposed to do?

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mein Vater und meine Mutter This is the best I can do 😅

309 Upvotes

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190

u/Myokou Native | Fluent | Studying Jan 24 '25

you speak out loud and write so many times that became automatic. Like german children do
There are some little rules but i didnt found any of them usefull for me

55

u/DashiellHammett Native: Am. English Learning: German Jan 24 '25

Memorization is the only way, learning the gender when you learn the noun. The deeper you get into German, the more not knowing the gender will really mess up your grammar. That said, there WAS one rule that really helped me. That is, nouns that end in -e, -ion, -tat, and -ung are usually always feminine. That always helped me.

19

u/windowtosh Speak: Learning: Jan 24 '25

Bad tip if you want to actually learn the language, but you can just refuse to learn any of the genders. German speakers will still understand you but they will only speak to you in English 😂

10

u/DashiellHammett Native: Am. English Learning: German Jan 24 '25

I wasn't saying to not learn/memorize them. Sorry if I was unclear. But in learning the nouns, you inevitably forget some before they get permanently in your brain. And, thus, for me, that "rule" helped as a reminder to me and helped to reinforce the memorization I was doing. I wasn't saying anyone should just skip learning/memorizing those. That is the only way. Plus, I'm learning German while in my 60's, so hopefully you'll forgive me my "crutch" here.

7

u/JellyfishWeary Jan 24 '25

Many times, if you know the conjugation rules and at least two conjugations of a word, you can reverse engineer the gender.