Quote:
Originally Posted by ArcheM
Well, we've kind of been through that when talking about the definite article. The only thing that doesn't apply is that there's an abstract, mathematical number "eins", similarly to "uno" in Spanish - I know this isn't particularly useful to you, but I actually wasn't sure if this wasn't a freak, isolated phenomenon. Because in all the other languages (that I know) the mathematical number is the same as calling the number of things: "un" in French, "één" in Dutch, "one" in English, of course.
But in Spanish there's "uno, dos, tres" and "un niño". Just as in German - "eins, zwei, drei" and "ein Junge".
The rest of your problem - well, things of course have to be inflected in German, as opposed to English. And there's no clear separation between the indefinite article and the... cardinal adjective "ein" in German. But in English "a" has the same root as "one".
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That makes more sense now, it was just the fact that the book tells you but really doesn't explain (but it is somewhat covered in the grammar chapter, adjectives and they're spellings and articles).
One thing I didn't notice about Duolingo, that it does have lessons on the cases but because it is Duolingo it doesn't obviously explain them, but it did help going through the grammar chapter in the book so now the lessons make more sense.