Quote:
Originally Posted by ArcheM
Say, what? When hasn't Duolingo been broken? 
But I'm sorry to say that I might be of little help when it comes to plurals. I mean, sheesh, I've just discovered that, indeed, the plural of Mädchen matches its singular form (I don't know why, I don't think I've ever seen or heard it used in the plural... or maybe just haven't paid attention).
I don't know which two classes they mean. So far I've kind of had to learn plurals by heart pretty much for each noun (barring some exceptions with common endings, like -ung). Like, there's nouns that stay the same, change a vowel, add -en, add -er... Which of those make up which class, I wonder.
But yeah, apparently neuter nouns ending in -chen stay the same. So das Mädchen - "the girl", die Mädchen - "the girls".
Better get used to nouns staying the same. There's a lot of them, ending in -er, especially for professions. A broad sampling: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Categ...fixed_with_-er .
Also, for pronunciation, don't forget https://forvo.com/. I'm sure I've already mentioned it here, but I suppose it got lost in the regular stream of links. It's a site where volunteers records their pronunciation of words and sentences. I've used it for Welsh, which means their database must be extensive indeed. |
Yeah, Duolingo, I guess I didn't actually lose my progress, it just switched to something else. But the new way it works is now each topic has levels, like I'm on level 4 of basics 1, and have now 15 lessons to complete. It no longer shows you the words you'll learn or your weakest words, it just has you do the lesson, if I wasn't already using the app before the update, I'd be totally lost.
As for plurals, I think I have a small (like 1%) grasp on them, you're right on "das Mädchen" being the singular (the girl) and "die Mädchen" being the plural as the book told me all plurals use the article "die". That's as far as I know in singular vs. plural. So like "der Mann" (the man) is the singular while "die Männer" (the men) is the plural atleast that seems to be my understanding of it anyways, I think it kind of clicked between reading in my book and seeing singular and plurals play out on Duolingo (even though that app doesn't explain anything). Now if I could only figure out why "Das" translates to "the", "that", "these", "those", and "this" (all seen on Duolingo as translations of "das", that is confusing how one word, when the main translation is "the" can have so many different meanings.
Thanks for the link I saved it so I can read it later.