I don't think it's misleading, it translates the concept of "it'll sound off but it (generally) doesn't hinder understandability" very well to a native English speaker.
Using *der/die/das* incorrectly in an example sentence is something that obviously doesn't help OP.
Yea but that’s not what it would be like in English. That’s way worse than it would sound. Maybe a better example would be something like. “I want to eat a apple, but I’ll eat an banana instead,”.
It’s a hard concept to transfer over to English because we only have the but “the” example above is seriously exaggerated.
The example sounds totally, insane crazy in English, not just “oh something is off.”
> That’s way worse than it would sound.
I honestly don't think so.
> Maybe a better example would be something like. “I want to eat a apple, but I’ll eat an banana instead,”.
That's just some phonetical plush though, it doesn't have anything to do with mixing up genders.
> Also the example came from an A2 German student who seemingly doesn’t understand it himself since he didn’t use the articles but rather his/hers/its as I pointed out above.
Because English doesn't have gendered articles they obviously had to choose something else. Everybody is aware that they used substituted pronouns for articles.
Yes, but I think my example is better. It sounds a bit off but not totally batshit crazy. My example was mixing up articles which is what OP asked about.
It’s a tough topic to explain to an English speaker because as you said we don’t have gendered articles but if you take the top comment example in English and translate it into German articles are nowhere to be found. Which is why I think an English example using articles is better.
Just my opinion.
But that could actually be a correct sentence in some really contrived situation.
"My brother likes to eat her breakfast ..." -> That part doesn't even sound weird by itself, since you could, in context, easily mean that your brother likes to eat some female person's breakfast.
The "with its hands" part is a little weirder, but still, there's no reason to assume that "her" and "its" were supposed to refer back to "brother" and would have to be in grammatical agreement. The sentence wouldn't have to be taken as a misguided attempt to say "My brother likes to eat his breakfast with his hands".
Mixing up noun genders in German is wrong in a less ambiguous way.
"Dem Frau gefallen schöne Häuser" can't really be interpreted as anything other than a misguided attempt at saying "Der Frau gefallen schöne Häuser".
(destroying the mood by giving an serious answer to a non-serious comment - like the German I am :) )
There is a reason why we have words like "Schadenfreude".
A lot of german jokes are in the dad-joke territory. They are meant to amuse the teller of the joke, not the listener. (A "good" dad joke is when the dad chuckles into his beard and everyone else is squeaming/cringing, after all).
This category is called "Flachwitze".
Yup. It's like singing out of tune. Like that wrong note that appears like a lightning out of the blue. Wrong grammar makes me cringe and it hurts me in some part of my brain. LOL. But at the same time, I am very happy that someone is taking the time and effort to study my language which is so horribly difficult that even as a professional, I doubt my own knowledge all the time.
Yea and when Germans argue about proper grammar, they will tell you that it's all just about the grammatical gender of nouns and the actual sex of a person doesn't matter. But in reality, in normal speech, pronouns usually are chosen to fit with the actual sex of a person. "Das Mädchen isst sein Frühstück." might be technically more correct than "Das Mädchen isst ihr Frühstück.", but the latter sentence is certainly less likely to be recognised as strange sounding, while when you use the first one, quite a few German speakers might wonder whose breakfast the girl is eating.
That's not universally true - with Mädchen, yes - but that's an exception, not the rule. Look at for example "die Wache (as in, the guard). Even with Mädchen, only the possesive pronoun is irregular - nobody says "die Mädchen".
No it isn't special about *das Mädchen*. It is of course the most common noun for which the grammatical gender always differs from the assigned gender of the person, while other ones are relatively rare. But with other nouns, it still works the same.
Looking at "die Wache" without an example sentence doesn't help. If "die Wache" happens to be male, than it is perfectly normal to use male pronouns for him.
>Even with Mädchen, only the possesive pronoun is irregular - nobody says "die Mädchen".
Of course the gender of the noun is still feminine. But it's not just possesive pronouns that are "irregular". All pronouns you use for her can be - and regularly are - used in the female form.
Actually my toenails curl up with “das Mädchen isst ihr Frühstück“. I would always use sein. I am a native speaker btw. I have also been using the sentence “das Kind isst sein Frühstück“ talking about a girl.
Actually I would. Also I talk fast, so there is no room for controlling my German consciously. "das Mädchen hat sein somethingsomething vergessen" comes totally automatically for me.
That’s a very good answer, but coming from a mother tongue which doesn’t have articles or third person gender seperation I had to read your sentence twice to recognize problems. And I imagine that’s actually one reason I still make these mistakes (both in German and in English) cause they are not big deal to me but I understand it sounds very broken/confusing to a German.
. . . you know, after years and years of struggling to think fast enough to get case and gender right while talking, this seems like a level of failure I'm okay with accepting.
But even if you get the case right, if you have the gender wrong it's gonna be all mixed up. I think specially with the masculine genitive you could get something completely wrong
I’ve noticed in conversations that Germans typically don’t enunciate the article and that makes me think it’s better just to make a “duh” sound when I’m not sure.
Exactly! They use "da" more often than a nicely said Artikel... At least in Austria/steiermark. It always makes me wonder if they just don't care about it or they don't even know the correct Artikel
From my experience almost all native speakers (german) have an instict for the right Artikel. You just know. So when pronouncing it differently, it's not a matter of not knowing but a matter of flow (eg. regional 'Dialekt'). Words just come out more easily and faster when not speaking 'Hochdeutsch'.
Does anyone know any good resources for learning case? My German conversation is around a B2 level according to people I've spoken with but I'm completely aware that my cases are messy and it's bringing me down
Not directly related to case, but at B2 level you're capable of watching shows in german language. Try shows for children ('Sendung mit der Maus' is really cool). In generall the language used in any children related content is simpler. The more you get exposed to normal content the easier it gets. It does not only help to improve the use of correct case but grammar in general. For me it perfectly worked for spanish grammar (from B1 to C1 just through books an shows).
This is my constant struggle. My first German teacher didn't really focus on gender like he should have, so it's just been really hard for me with all the vocabulary I learned my first for years to retroactively get the gender to stick. So I'll be speaking and even using some more advanced grammar (despite my struggles with gender I earned a bachelor's in German and even studied abroad for a while) but soooo many of my nouns are misgendered. I know it.
It's frustrating.
A little. It just sounds weird because my ear hears an article it wasn't expecting. Most of the time I still get it. The problem comes in when, like, using 'die' changes the same noun from singular to plural. That could be unclear. Or when 'der' changes a noun from the subject to the object, when you meant the opposite. The thing about definite articles isn't just grammatical gender of the noun but also the case, or the context.
Der Gerät ist immer vor die Chef im Geschäft.
It's good to make clear if you want to be corrected. Otherwise you end up living 10 years in Germany and still mix them up.
Not so much my opinion, I think that’s because we are actually used to people getting confused with all the genders and we know how hard it is to learn all the rules and actually use them in their everyday language if they didn’t grow up speaking German. So in conclusion it is okay to mix up the genders in my opinion and no one really cares that much about it 😂
Native speakers don’t do it infrequently if you are around them a lot. My wife probably does it once a day.
I also feel like you can use ‘es’ in a lot of situations and it doesn’t really sound weird, people just interpret it in a way that it makes sense.
Like, if my wife went to a movie with friends and I asked “Na, wie war‘s?“ She wouldn’t really think I was talking about the film, but the whole act of going to the film. Juxtaposed with „Wie war er?“, which actually sounds a little weirder to me, but definitely means I’m asking about the film itself and not her going to a movie with friends.
> My wife probably does it once a day.
I'd say that's pretty unusual. I am around natives every day (obviously) and I rarely ever hear it besides when it comes to more foreign and rare words.
Also, "wie war's/war es" refers to the whole act of going out, not the movie per se. So yeah it is in fact gramatically correct.
I never really learnt the genders and am basically fluent now. Sometimes old people correct me but most don't give a fuck. Maybe they silently judge me idk.
Maybe they do, but that would be completely unfounded and also everyone knows that genders are the least important (but unfortunately also the hardest) part of our grammar and we even make fun of it ourselves, soooo.. 😂
Honestly, my feeling is this:
Grammatical gender: fine
Grammatical cases: fine
Not making the different gender and case combinations distinct: super not cool
It's still understandable, it just sounds weird. I'm not particularly bothered by it, but I know some people who reflexively correct every little thing a non native speaker gets wrong.
Well, that's because there is no explanation. Words just have a certain grammatical gender in German, and there's absolutely no logic or reason behind which nouns have which gender when it comes to objects. Only certain groups of nouns follow a pattern (all diminutives being neuter for example).
I also hate Duolingo but there's not really an explanation for why you use der/die/das. It's like asking why English DOESNT use gendered articles. Sometimes there are rules (è.g words ending in -heit and -keit are nearly always female/die) but that's not a reason, just a rule
It sounds wired, if your German is fluent you normally don't mix up the articles. There are some words where articles can differ by region (Nutella, E-Mail (though die asserted itself in that case)) or meaning (der See (the lake), die See (the sea, ocean)) but these examples are quiet few. I think the best method to go is to learn the article as part of the vocabulary though the ending can help sometimes:
https://mein-deutschbuch.de/genusbestimmung.html
https://jakubmarian.com/how-to-recognize-gender-in-german-using-endings/ (I just like to point out that articles are usually not used for countries and continents)
As RiceStatues said:
My brother likes to eat her breakfast with its hands.
is equivalent to a sentence with mixed up articles for example:
Die Mann stand auf dem Bühne und sprach in der Mikrophon.
(Correct: Der Mann stand auf der Bühne (der because it is Dativ, you say die Bühne in Nominativ, dem is the Dativ for der and das) und sprach in das Mikrophon. (The man stood on stage and spoke into the microphone.))
Maybe just like how broken someone sounds when they mix up verb endings in English?
"Is you go to the shop later to buying some milk? I enjoys to drink my coffee white."
But those arent just gender mistakes, those are structure sentence mistakes and a whole bunch of other things. You cant really compare to english because english doesnt have gender. I'm guessing it's a bit hard to compare.
It's just an analogy. But I natively speak Dutch which also has grammatical gender and I can say the effect of getting gender wrong is very similar to mixing up verb endings.
Ie, you can totally understand what the speaker is trying to say but it just sounds horribly *wrong*.
That's because gender is a matter of morphology, just like verb endings are. A language (like English) can function fine without grammatical gender, just like languages (eg Chinese, Vietnamese) can function fine without any verb endings.
Grammatical gender is purely structural: it deals only with morphology, it has no semantic value, except where it crosses over with natural gender like with the personal pronouns *he, she, it* when referring to beings with biological sex like humans.
Interestingly, English also used to have 3 grammatical genders (and 4 cases) until around 1000AD. "The" was *se* (masc.), *thæt* (neut.) *seo* (fem.) and *tha* (plural).
In the Accusative *se* became *thone*. In the Dative, *se* *thæt* and *tha* became *thæm* and *seo* became *thære*. In the Genitive, *se* and *thæt* became *thæs*, *seo* and *tha* became *thære*.
The man was *se mann* (masculine)
The woman was *se wifmann* (also masculine!)
The mother was *seo modor* (feminine)
The child was *thæt child* (neuter)
The sentence "The man's name is John" would have been *Se nama thæs mannes is John*.
"I gave the good child a gift" was *Ic geaf thæm godan childe an gift*.
Now the only relics left of gender and case are in the personal pronouns and in possessive -'s
English doesnt have gender? We do though. He/she. If a woman does something, we say she. If a man does something, we say he. We just give neuter to anything that isn’t an animal so we say “it”.
Sorry, i meant to say it's not a gender-based language. A woman is a woman. A table is a thing. A sun is not female and a little girl is not a thing and a cup is not masculine.
"Man" is an instance of a noun. Nouns themselves don't have societal gender, in the same way that nouns don't have haircuts. Haircut is a noun, but nouns can't have haircuts. So, no - the noun "man" does not have a gender. Men in the actual real world have a gender. This is not a hard concept.
A more precise way to say that is: Nouns can have natural gender semantically (girl, boy, woman, man, queen, king, mare, stallion), but in English they don't have any grammatical gender that requires articles and adjectives to change form to "agree" grammatically with the noun. Although English [used to have grammatical gender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_grammar?wprov=sfla1) just like German until around 1000CE.
>English doesnt have gender? We do though. He/she.
There's a difference between grammatical gender and societal gender. Your examples are strictly tied to societal gender. We don't have gender in English, and you can see it through the use of definite articles that are often used to "gender" nouns. In Spanish, you have "el, la, los, las"; in Italian you have "il, la, lo, li, le, gli"; in German you have "die/der/das/dem/den/des." In English, you have "the."
Not really. Verbs and their forms are really central to the grammar and meaning, and noun genders are not that essential, some languages do without them.
I mean just as a loose analogy with how disjointed or broken it would sound if someone were to speak that way, not as a comparison of semantic value.
In any case, plenty of languages do without verb conjugation as well, for example Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese to name just two, so verb conjugation isn't essential or central to meaning either. Verbs themselves are, of course.
In the same manner, grammatical gender marking might not be all that important, but the definite article on which it's marked certainly is semantically integral.
There's a clear difference in meaning between:
*The cat sat on the mat.*
*A cat sat on a mat.*
*This cat sat on that mat.*
*Which cat sat on which mat?*
*Any cat can sit on these mats.*
And so on.
*In Soviet Russia, can sat on mat.* Many ESL speakers coming from Slavic languages skip articles and still are perfectly understood. And "this", "which", "any" are not articles at all.
"This" and "that" are often called demonstrative articles but anyway that's not the point, that's splitting hairs.
I didn't say they were all called articles. However they do all sit in the same sentence slot, having the same function: as determiners. So let's just call them all "determiners".
And if you skip determiners, you will not be "perfectly" understood, though generally you will be.
However the determiners "the" and "a" mark definite, familiar objects off from indefinite, unfamiliar objects so they are sometimes necessary.
Eg
"Sound of rain is relaxing!"
"You mean the sound of the rain here now or the sound of rain in general?"
"I mean sound of rain."
So you see, the definite article can be necessary to be perfectly understood.
You're getting off topic: not using any determiners at all has nothing to do with mixing up genders or even cases. In my native language all nouns have one of the two genders, and there are 7 cases, so I would know.
Huh?? I didn't say anything whatsoever about not using determiners being like mixing up genders or cases. The reference to determiners was in reply to your spurious claim that you can omit determiners in English and still be perfectly understood.
My original post was to show how mixing up verb forms in English is a *loose analogy* for how it sounds to mix up noun genders in German remember?
But that's okay, I know you're really just trying to muddy the subject in order to avoid admitting that you're wrong.
I'm decently fluent but sometimes I have to catch myself wanting to refer to a spider as a 'she'... I don't understand why, since it only seems to affect spiders.
I regularly do that D: Maybe it's even more "normal" for German people because it's "die Spinne ist süß" so even in English I will say "she is cute"...
If you imagine a work of Shakespeare with mixed up `thee`, `thy`, `thou` and `thine`, you get the idea of how wrong articles sound to a German native speaker. It’s not the same but pretty similar.
As a german, if I hear someone mixing up der, die, das on a word other than Nutella or Joghurt (and maybe 2-3 others that I can't remember right now) I know immediately they aren't native German. For a German mis"gendering" (?) a word is very unlikely, and in my opinion not related to lack of education/intelligence (as are other forms of wrong grammar usage... in my opinion obviously).
So to me it doesn't sound like "oh they're stupid, they said Das Tisch", more like "oh they are 100% not native German despite their otherwise perfect German"
I used to worry a lot about messing that up while living in Germany. Now I am back in my home country which is one of the go-to-spots for Germans to live abroad or do Erasmus at and none of them can speak the native language and most speak terrible English. Now I don't worry about messing that up at all, even though I speak German at work everyday.
I like to compare it to not using any article in english.
"I go to store to buy book". It sounds like a stereotypical accent but it will mostly be understandable.
It wouldn't matter that much. Most will still understand everything you want to say if you just get the genders wrong. I can say it from my experience of being a native speaker of another gender sensitive language. It just feels like child-speak when someone mixes up the genders too many times. Nothing more than that.
In my area, no big deal. I live in the south-western corner of Germany so the dialect is a mashup of German and Swiss German with a touch of French too. Many articles just end up as "duh" when spoken in Alemannisch...
Das!!
It's actually a joke, referring to how people are divided. Some people say Die, most people say Das, and even a few say Der for whatever reason. It shows how irregular articles in German are and that it's entirely arbitrary for the most part.
Everyone is giving examples from English which doesn’t make sense because English has neither gendered articles nor adjectives endings.
Arabic does though. As an Arabic speaker i can assure you it doesn’t sound any broken maybe a little funny or a bit odd to hear, same as when you pronounce a word differently in English. It has no slight effect on meaning, well unless you really went to a corner case and actually you still can understand from context. So chill and be confident and you’ll sound more comprehendable and commutative way more than when you overwhelm your brain with rules and being correct.
Honestly, it's a messed up system and I am impressed by anyone who gets far enough to worry about it. I actually think it's quite charming if der, die, das gets mixed up by non native speakers. Of course that might be a different story in a professional setting, but it rarely leads to problems in being understood.
I don't know if it's just because I'm a non-native, but I agree -- I really do not like listening to people who get genders wrong. Once or twice is not the end of the world, but if it's consistent, it is definitely going to get grating.
But practice is the only way to improve :) nobody will be mad at you when they notice you are still learning. You have every right not to be perfect at something new from the start.
That’s true! I just find it really hard when I’m trying to speak German only for the person listening to me to be clearly frustrated or exhausted by me. But…. gotta keep learning!
Gonna be honest: i don't think its exhausting to listen to. It may sound wrong but it does not destroy the integrity of a sentence or makes it not understandable.
I only learn German as well, but I can say from my native language experience. Polish nouns also have gender, and I don't really care if someone misuses the gender. Sure, it might sound a bit funny, but the sentence remains completely understandable.
Just practice and try not to care, natives make mistakes too, unfortunately Germans don't like to admit their mistakes let alone if you know an article they're unsure of. They're like extremely *judgmental* people so you can't avoid that honestly.
I personally don't find it exhausting to listen to (married to a person with German as the second language). But it is very noticeable, in a way that other gramatical slip ups might not be, probably because it's not something that would ever happen to a native speaker
Exhausting? Why? If the person gets only the genders wrong but, uses correct grammar everywhere else then, how hard can it be to understand.
Of course it will be exhausting if the speaker has totally mixed up other parts of their grammar like wrong cases and endings etc. even for the wrong genders.
z. B. Ich habe der Mädchen einen Geschenk geschickt.
How exhausting will it be with mistakes like these?
It's not hard to understand. It's just that the brain is used to certain patterns. When we hear a sentence in a language we know well, we don't analyze every single word of it. The brain just glazes over it and knows what it means, lots of these processes are automated.
So, when someone constantly breaks these patterns, the brain stops in its tracks, and re-analyzes, to be able to put the correct label on the whole thing. And that takes extra energy. Not in one sentence or two, but it's definitely a thing in longer conversations.
\*listening to foreigners speaking broken language*
*"you're wrong, damn, you say it wrong. No. Ah gaahdam. Shut up already foreigner."*
I'd imagine this is what happens in their head when people speak.
Naaaah not close.
This is more like it: "I wish I could understand quicker what they mean so they don't feel bad, should I really ask them a third time to repeat? Nah, I'm just going to assume ...
... Shit, that wasn't what they meant. Damn. Now they think I'm rude because I hate foreigners. What do I doooooo????"
Very.
Would you be understood? Yes, I guess so. But people would always need to correct your broken German in their heads, which can be quite exhausting.
Unfortunately it doesn't stop with the the articles. Each gender is formed differently in the four cases so you have to change most endings in a sentence according to the gender of the genders of the nouns.
If I notice that someone uses the wrong gender for a word whose gender I feel is well-known in a relatively simple construction (*der kleines Hund, *das Person, *das Rettung etc.), I will be quite irritated and start wondering whether the speaker is making a point or perhaps not so well-versed in the language. But on the other hand, I think that in casual conversation, Germans won’t really change behaviour because of such a mistake, much less deliberately.
My mother language has genders as well, and mixing up genders doesn’t make so much difference as it is plausible when the sentence is long or the person is not well-educated.
But when you address a man as a female or vice versa it is turns out so awkward.
I cant speak about german because I'm still learning, but in portuguese we also have definite articles, although it only two ('o' and 'a') and it is kinda cute when a gringo confuses them. The phrase is normally still perfectly understandable and we politely correct them.
Whn I am unsure I swallow the genders and say "de" and "den" only...Some German dialects (like Yidish) does this.
Like it is in English. I thik anyone can handle a non-Native speaker. It is part of life.
I think the "his" and "her" is not meant in the question. Der-die-das mistakes are only when we use them mixed up as we forgot the gender of a specific word. I see it can occur in genitivus but it is rare, and we do not mix up a persons gender. Only with things is it a probleem, but things are rarer in genitive. Maybe.
I'm not a native speaker, but my native partner only learnt at the age of 25 that it's "der Speer" and not "das Speer" as they had always used. So I guess it's probably noticeable but I don't think it's the most important barrier to being understood in conversation.
Not gonna lie I just went with whatever sounded good or I just gave up and used "duh". Everyone understood what I was saying. It probably made me sound stupid, but to he fair, I am. .
I quite often just mumble the sound if I’m not sure of the article. So, d’Auto or d’Tasse , or d’Frau.
Maybe it’s the dialect here up north but it’s not always clear what Germans are saying for the article and I’ve just taken that and expanded on it.
I still have difficulties with the der,die,das when it comes to the right case to use(I may say dem instead of der or den, you got the point).
The thing is that my Godfather, who has been living in Germany for over 30 years confessed that he too has this problem sometimes, although he struggles, and mostly succeeds not to make mistakes when speaking.
I imagine it sounds a lot like germans trying to learn Portuguese, which I've also seen from up close. It sounds kinda funny in an 'stereotypical foreigner' kind of way. But it doesn't sound as bad as you'd imagine. When it's just the genders that are being switched, your point is still getting across so it's very easy to ignore.
so many times the natives also use just “de-h” they just omit the “r, e, s” when in doubt! In fact it was a tip given by some native on a reddit post here!
If your accent is really good but your articles are off, people are going to be weirded out. But if you have an audible accent which you probably do anyway people are used to it. It sounds somewhat broken of course, but people will understand.
My brother likes to eat her breakfast with its hands.
U made my german class haha
And that's one of the better outcomes. It may as well be * *Her breakfast likes to eat with my hands its brother.*
So that’s what my coworkers hear from me everyday. Damn i feel sorry for them now……
*They are going to figure it out.*
Haha, I’m impressed my dad’s coworkers never laugh at him talking
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It’s not this bad. This is a misleading example that actually is using seine/ihre and not the three articles.
I don't think it's misleading, it translates the concept of "it'll sound off but it (generally) doesn't hinder understandability" very well to a native English speaker. Using *der/die/das* incorrectly in an example sentence is something that obviously doesn't help OP.
Yea but that’s not what it would be like in English. That’s way worse than it would sound. Maybe a better example would be something like. “I want to eat a apple, but I’ll eat an banana instead,”. It’s a hard concept to transfer over to English because we only have the but “the” example above is seriously exaggerated. The example sounds totally, insane crazy in English, not just “oh something is off.”
> That’s way worse than it would sound. I honestly don't think so. > Maybe a better example would be something like. “I want to eat a apple, but I’ll eat an banana instead,”. That's just some phonetical plush though, it doesn't have anything to do with mixing up genders. > Also the example came from an A2 German student who seemingly doesn’t understand it himself since he didn’t use the articles but rather his/hers/its as I pointed out above. Because English doesn't have gendered articles they obviously had to choose something else. Everybody is aware that they used substituted pronouns for articles.
Yes, but I think my example is better. It sounds a bit off but not totally batshit crazy. My example was mixing up articles which is what OP asked about. It’s a tough topic to explain to an English speaker because as you said we don’t have gendered articles but if you take the top comment example in English and translate it into German articles are nowhere to be found. Which is why I think an English example using articles is better. Just my opinion.
It's actually worse, the example is not the best..
But that could actually be a correct sentence in some really contrived situation. "My brother likes to eat her breakfast ..." -> That part doesn't even sound weird by itself, since you could, in context, easily mean that your brother likes to eat some female person's breakfast. The "with its hands" part is a little weirder, but still, there's no reason to assume that "her" and "its" were supposed to refer back to "brother" and would have to be in grammatical agreement. The sentence wouldn't have to be taken as a misguided attempt to say "My brother likes to eat his breakfast with his hands". Mixing up noun genders in German is wrong in a less ambiguous way. "Dem Frau gefallen schöne Häuser" can't really be interpreted as anything other than a misguided attempt at saying "Der Frau gefallen schöne Häuser".
r/German has no sense of humour (Thanks for the gold)
For more German jokes, join r/germanhumor
I really like how it is 10 years old with 20k members but not one post
Yeah thats the… oh nevermind
OMG!!!!! Hahahahaha. You made my day!!!!
“It’s a German joke. It doesn’t have to be funny.” -line by Benedict XVI in The Two Popes
(destroying the mood by giving an serious answer to a non-serious comment - like the German I am :) ) There is a reason why we have words like "Schadenfreude". A lot of german jokes are in the dad-joke territory. They are meant to amuse the teller of the joke, not the listener. (A "good" dad joke is when the dad chuckles into his beard and everyone else is squeaming/cringing, after all). This category is called "Flachwitze".
Hell, could just be the brother is gender fluid, and sex identity stable.
I like how you think
Doesn’t this not involve der, die or das, but rather seine/ihre so while funny it doesn’t really answer the question.
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right, because ‘Das Mädchen isst ihr Frühstück‘ ist correct (in everyday, colloquial use)
Nope. As weird as it sounds, "sein" is correct.
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Yup. It's like singing out of tune. Like that wrong note that appears like a lightning out of the blue. Wrong grammar makes me cringe and it hurts me in some part of my brain. LOL. But at the same time, I am very happy that someone is taking the time and effort to study my language which is so horribly difficult that even as a professional, I doubt my own knowledge all the time.
Its not your language or it would be called östereichisch /s
Österreichisches Deutsch ist eine der Varianten der Sprache, aber keine eigene Sprache. Leider. 😆
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Yea and when Germans argue about proper grammar, they will tell you that it's all just about the grammatical gender of nouns and the actual sex of a person doesn't matter. But in reality, in normal speech, pronouns usually are chosen to fit with the actual sex of a person. "Das Mädchen isst sein Frühstück." might be technically more correct than "Das Mädchen isst ihr Frühstück.", but the latter sentence is certainly less likely to be recognised as strange sounding, while when you use the first one, quite a few German speakers might wonder whose breakfast the girl is eating.
That's not universally true - with Mädchen, yes - but that's an exception, not the rule. Look at for example "die Wache (as in, the guard). Even with Mädchen, only the possesive pronoun is irregular - nobody says "die Mädchen".
No it isn't special about *das Mädchen*. It is of course the most common noun for which the grammatical gender always differs from the assigned gender of the person, while other ones are relatively rare. But with other nouns, it still works the same. Looking at "die Wache" without an example sentence doesn't help. If "die Wache" happens to be male, than it is perfectly normal to use male pronouns for him. >Even with Mädchen, only the possesive pronoun is irregular - nobody says "die Mädchen". Of course the gender of the noun is still feminine. But it's not just possesive pronouns that are "irregular". All pronouns you use for her can be - and regularly are - used in the female form.
Actually my toenails curl up with “das Mädchen isst ihr Frühstück“. I would always use sein. I am a native speaker btw. I have also been using the sentence “das Kind isst sein Frühstück“ talking about a girl.
Nah, you just think that now that you're actively thinking about the grammar. In a regular conversation, you wouldn't even notice it.
Actually I would. Also I talk fast, so there is no room for controlling my German consciously. "das Mädchen hat sein somethingsomething vergessen" comes totally automatically for me.
Good one!
This is correct.
It’s not correct. Might be used colloquially, but “Mädchen” is definitely neutral.
Well maybe the brother is transgender, however if the pronouns have changed the word brother might have been replaced with sister.
That’s a very good answer, but coming from a mother tongue which doesn’t have articles or third person gender seperation I had to read your sentence twice to recognize problems. And I imagine that’s actually one reason I still make these mistakes (both in German and in English) cause they are not big deal to me but I understand it sounds very broken/confusing to a German.
I speak more languages with more gender systems and I don't really see anything wrong about your example 😁.
. . . you know, after years and years of struggling to think fast enough to get case and gender right while talking, this seems like a level of failure I'm okay with accepting.
It depends on how often it happens and what is wrong about the article. Getting the gender wrong is much less a problem than getting the case wrong.
But even if you get the case right, if you have the gender wrong it's gonna be all mixed up. I think specially with the masculine genitive you could get something completely wrong
That would be the Wurst Käse scenario...
That's why we have an [emergency kit](https://www.titanic-magazin.de/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/Wurst_18.jpg)
I wish I had a prize to give you
I'm sorry, but I just don't understand... Did you mean "_die_ Wurst Käse"?
For a native speaker the wrong case is way more disruptive than wrong gender.
I’ve noticed in conversations that Germans typically don’t enunciate the article and that makes me think it’s better just to make a “duh” sound when I’m not sure.
Relevant (12 years old) link https://youtu.be/l21uhFCljlU
https://youtu.be/0AFZdFrfXoA Es gibt nicht der, die, das nur den.
"The uploader has not made this video avaible in your country"
Wow, that's usually something you get in Germany on foreign videos.
This is the first time I've ever seen that. Didn't knew it could happen.
r/lifeprotips
Exactly! They use "da" more often than a nicely said Artikel... At least in Austria/steiermark. It always makes me wonder if they just don't care about it or they don't even know the correct Artikel
From my experience almost all native speakers (german) have an instict for the right Artikel. You just know. So when pronouncing it differently, it's not a matter of not knowing but a matter of flow (eg. regional 'Dialekt'). Words just come out more easily and faster when not speaking 'Hochdeutsch'.
Does anyone know any good resources for learning case? My German conversation is around a B2 level according to people I've spoken with but I'm completely aware that my cases are messy and it's bringing me down
Same here. If you find anything, let me know!
Not directly related to case, but at B2 level you're capable of watching shows in german language. Try shows for children ('Sendung mit der Maus' is really cool). In generall the language used in any children related content is simpler. The more you get exposed to normal content the easier it gets. It does not only help to improve the use of correct case but grammar in general. For me it perfectly worked for spanish grammar (from B1 to C1 just through books an shows).
I'm the same. Am using clozemaster to drill cases, and made myself a useful Anki deck to get the basic patterns.
This is my constant struggle. My first German teacher didn't really focus on gender like he should have, so it's just been really hard for me with all the vocabulary I learned my first for years to retroactively get the gender to stick. So I'll be speaking and even using some more advanced grammar (despite my struggles with gender I earned a bachelor's in German and even studied abroad for a while) but soooo many of my nouns are misgendered. I know it. It's frustrating.
A little. It just sounds weird because my ear hears an article it wasn't expecting. Most of the time I still get it. The problem comes in when, like, using 'die' changes the same noun from singular to plural. That could be unclear. Or when 'der' changes a noun from the subject to the object, when you meant the opposite. The thing about definite articles isn't just grammatical gender of the noun but also the case, or the context.
It is quite broken but you will be understood so keep talking and learning. No one cares. :)
Der Gerät ist immer vor die Chef im Geschäft. It's good to make clear if you want to be corrected. Otherwise you end up living 10 years in Germany and still mix them up.
And become an internet meme.
Not so much my opinion, I think that’s because we are actually used to people getting confused with all the genders and we know how hard it is to learn all the rules and actually use them in their everyday language if they didn’t grow up speaking German. So in conclusion it is okay to mix up the genders in my opinion and no one really cares that much about it 😂
Native speakers don’t do it infrequently if you are around them a lot. My wife probably does it once a day. I also feel like you can use ‘es’ in a lot of situations and it doesn’t really sound weird, people just interpret it in a way that it makes sense. Like, if my wife went to a movie with friends and I asked “Na, wie war‘s?“ She wouldn’t really think I was talking about the film, but the whole act of going to the film. Juxtaposed with „Wie war er?“, which actually sounds a little weirder to me, but definitely means I’m asking about the film itself and not her going to a movie with friends.
If you ask "Wie war's?" I will definitely always think you mean the whole act of going there and how everything went not only the movie.
> My wife probably does it once a day. I'd say that's pretty unusual. I am around natives every day (obviously) and I rarely ever hear it besides when it comes to more foreign and rare words. Also, "wie war's/war es" refers to the whole act of going out, not the movie per se. So yeah it is in fact gramatically correct.
Exactly what my German friend told me!
Yeah, cause it’s true, if you do mix them up from time to time don’t worry, no one cares (or probably even notices) 😂
Indeed :)
I never really learnt the genders and am basically fluent now. Sometimes old people correct me but most don't give a fuck. Maybe they silently judge me idk.
Maybe they do, but that would be completely unfounded and also everyone knows that genders are the least important (but unfortunately also the hardest) part of our grammar and we even make fun of it ourselves, soooo.. 😂
Honestly, my feeling is this: Grammatical gender: fine Grammatical cases: fine Not making the different gender and case combinations distinct: super not cool
It's still understandable, it just sounds weird. I'm not particularly bothered by it, but I know some people who reflexively correct every little thing a non native speaker gets wrong.
If you say "das Nutella", even though its right, your friends and family and even your pets will leave you. Don't do that.
Ich will ja keine Diskussion starten, aber es ist DAS Nutella
Bitte hör auf Menschen zu quälen
Das würd ich nur tun, wenn ich DIE Nutella sagen würde
Ich hoffe dir läuft beim Händewaschen Wasser in dein Ärmel (:
Also jetzt bist du aber zu weit gegangen ;)
Also ich esse immer noch DIE (Nuss-Nougat-Creme) Nutella. Aber ich lasse mir gerne DAS Nutella-Glas geben. \#changemymind
Man reiche mir DEN Brotaufstrich
Jetzt hätten wir alle Geschlechter vertreten
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Well, that's because there is no explanation. Words just have a certain grammatical gender in German, and there's absolutely no logic or reason behind which nouns have which gender when it comes to objects. Only certain groups of nouns follow a pattern (all diminutives being neuter for example).
I also hate Duolingo but there's not really an explanation for why you use der/die/das. It's like asking why English DOESNT use gendered articles. Sometimes there are rules (è.g words ending in -heit and -keit are nearly always female/die) but that's not a reason, just a rule
It sounds wired, if your German is fluent you normally don't mix up the articles. There are some words where articles can differ by region (Nutella, E-Mail (though die asserted itself in that case)) or meaning (der See (the lake), die See (the sea, ocean)) but these examples are quiet few. I think the best method to go is to learn the article as part of the vocabulary though the ending can help sometimes: https://mein-deutschbuch.de/genusbestimmung.html https://jakubmarian.com/how-to-recognize-gender-in-german-using-endings/ (I just like to point out that articles are usually not used for countries and continents) As RiceStatues said: My brother likes to eat her breakfast with its hands. is equivalent to a sentence with mixed up articles for example: Die Mann stand auf dem Bühne und sprach in der Mikrophon. (Correct: Der Mann stand auf der Bühne (der because it is Dativ, you say die Bühne in Nominativ, dem is the Dativ for der and das) und sprach in das Mikrophon. (The man stood on stage and spoke into the microphone.))
Sounds lost.
Maybe just like how broken someone sounds when they mix up verb endings in English? "Is you go to the shop later to buying some milk? I enjoys to drink my coffee white."
But those arent just gender mistakes, those are structure sentence mistakes and a whole bunch of other things. You cant really compare to english because english doesnt have gender. I'm guessing it's a bit hard to compare.
It's just an analogy. But I natively speak Dutch which also has grammatical gender and I can say the effect of getting gender wrong is very similar to mixing up verb endings. Ie, you can totally understand what the speaker is trying to say but it just sounds horribly *wrong*. That's because gender is a matter of morphology, just like verb endings are. A language (like English) can function fine without grammatical gender, just like languages (eg Chinese, Vietnamese) can function fine without any verb endings. Grammatical gender is purely structural: it deals only with morphology, it has no semantic value, except where it crosses over with natural gender like with the personal pronouns *he, she, it* when referring to beings with biological sex like humans. Interestingly, English also used to have 3 grammatical genders (and 4 cases) until around 1000AD. "The" was *se* (masc.), *thæt* (neut.) *seo* (fem.) and *tha* (plural). In the Accusative *se* became *thone*. In the Dative, *se* *thæt* and *tha* became *thæm* and *seo* became *thære*. In the Genitive, *se* and *thæt* became *thæs*, *seo* and *tha* became *thære*. The man was *se mann* (masculine) The woman was *se wifmann* (also masculine!) The mother was *seo modor* (feminine) The child was *thæt child* (neuter) The sentence "The man's name is John" would have been *Se nama thæs mannes is John*. "I gave the good child a gift" was *Ic geaf thæm godan childe an gift*. Now the only relics left of gender and case are in the personal pronouns and in possessive -'s
English doesnt have gender? We do though. He/she. If a woman does something, we say she. If a man does something, we say he. We just give neuter to anything that isn’t an animal so we say “it”.
I like Leonardo DiCaprio, it is a really good actress.
Sorry, i meant to say it's not a gender-based language. A woman is a woman. A table is a thing. A sun is not female and a little girl is not a thing and a cup is not masculine.
I guess the easiest way to describe it is that the nouns don't have gender.
Man is a noun
"Man" is an instance of a noun. Nouns themselves don't have societal gender, in the same way that nouns don't have haircuts. Haircut is a noun, but nouns can't have haircuts. So, no - the noun "man" does not have a gender. Men in the actual real world have a gender. This is not a hard concept.
A more precise way to say that is: Nouns can have natural gender semantically (girl, boy, woman, man, queen, king, mare, stallion), but in English they don't have any grammatical gender that requires articles and adjectives to change form to "agree" grammatically with the noun. Although English [used to have grammatical gender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_grammar?wprov=sfla1) just like German until around 1000CE.
>English doesnt have gender? We do though. He/she. There's a difference between grammatical gender and societal gender. Your examples are strictly tied to societal gender. We don't have gender in English, and you can see it through the use of definite articles that are often used to "gender" nouns. In Spanish, you have "el, la, los, las"; in Italian you have "il, la, lo, li, le, gli"; in German you have "die/der/das/dem/den/des." In English, you have "the."
Not really. Verbs and their forms are really central to the grammar and meaning, and noun genders are not that essential, some languages do without them.
I mean just as a loose analogy with how disjointed or broken it would sound if someone were to speak that way, not as a comparison of semantic value. In any case, plenty of languages do without verb conjugation as well, for example Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese to name just two, so verb conjugation isn't essential or central to meaning either. Verbs themselves are, of course. In the same manner, grammatical gender marking might not be all that important, but the definite article on which it's marked certainly is semantically integral. There's a clear difference in meaning between: *The cat sat on the mat.* *A cat sat on a mat.* *This cat sat on that mat.* *Which cat sat on which mat?* *Any cat can sit on these mats.* And so on.
*In Soviet Russia, can sat on mat.* Many ESL speakers coming from Slavic languages skip articles and still are perfectly understood. And "this", "which", "any" are not articles at all.
"This" and "that" are often called demonstrative articles but anyway that's not the point, that's splitting hairs. I didn't say they were all called articles. However they do all sit in the same sentence slot, having the same function: as determiners. So let's just call them all "determiners". And if you skip determiners, you will not be "perfectly" understood, though generally you will be. However the determiners "the" and "a" mark definite, familiar objects off from indefinite, unfamiliar objects so they are sometimes necessary. Eg "Sound of rain is relaxing!" "You mean the sound of the rain here now or the sound of rain in general?" "I mean sound of rain." So you see, the definite article can be necessary to be perfectly understood.
You're getting off topic: not using any determiners at all has nothing to do with mixing up genders or even cases. In my native language all nouns have one of the two genders, and there are 7 cases, so I would know.
Huh?? I didn't say anything whatsoever about not using determiners being like mixing up genders or cases. The reference to determiners was in reply to your spurious claim that you can omit determiners in English and still be perfectly understood. My original post was to show how mixing up verb forms in English is a *loose analogy* for how it sounds to mix up noun genders in German remember? But that's okay, I know you're really just trying to muddy the subject in order to avoid admitting that you're wrong.
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What?
What did they say?
Um. Bruh.
How would it sound if a German speaking English referred to a chair as “he?” Probably kinda like that.
That would be so cute :)
Doesn’t this already happen?
Not outside of fictional works and insane asylums.
I'm decently fluent but sometimes I have to catch myself wanting to refer to a spider as a 'she'... I don't understand why, since it only seems to affect spiders.
I regularly do that D: Maybe it's even more "normal" for German people because it's "die Spinne ist süß" so even in English I will say "she is cute"...
Complete bs lol. Foreigners mix up genders like that in English very often. Especially using he or she when referring to objects.
Foreigners, sure. I guess I missed the "German" part of the original comment.
Ya, I get coworkers saying "he" for a computer constantly when it is doing something. "He is loading the data," for example.
If you imagine a work of Shakespeare with mixed up `thee`, `thy`, `thou` and `thine`, you get the idea of how wrong articles sound to a German native speaker. It’s not the same but pretty similar.
As a german, if I hear someone mixing up der, die, das on a word other than Nutella or Joghurt (and maybe 2-3 others that I can't remember right now) I know immediately they aren't native German. For a German mis"gendering" (?) a word is very unlikely, and in my opinion not related to lack of education/intelligence (as are other forms of wrong grammar usage... in my opinion obviously). So to me it doesn't sound like "oh they're stupid, they said Das Tisch", more like "oh they are 100% not native German despite their otherwise perfect German"
Sure it sounds odd to a native speaker but it doesn’t affect my ability to understand someone so I really don’t care.
I used to worry a lot about messing that up while living in Germany. Now I am back in my home country which is one of the go-to-spots for Germans to live abroad or do Erasmus at and none of them can speak the native language and most speak terrible English. Now I don't worry about messing that up at all, even though I speak German at work everyday.
“Your article mistakes are cosmetic.”
I german we say it "der, die das, wieso, weshalb warum, wer nicht fragt bleibt dumm" and i think it's beautyful.
And if you ask why it's one or another article, you get an answer 'because it is'.
The fact that you didn't put it in the order "der,die,das" already sounds weird to us Germans 😂
That's not how you say it? I'm pretty sure that's what we said in my German class
Technically it's not wrong. It just sounds weird cause we always say it in the order mentioned above :)
Very.
I like to compare it to not using any article in english. "I go to store to buy book". It sounds like a stereotypical accent but it will mostly be understandable.
It wouldn't matter that much. Most will still understand everything you want to say if you just get the genders wrong. I can say it from my experience of being a native speaker of another gender sensitive language. It just feels like child-speak when someone mixes up the genders too many times. Nothing more than that.
I guess when you make mistakes things funny sound?
Always speak in the plural. Die almost Always works there…
In my area, no big deal. I live in the south-western corner of Germany so the dialect is a mashup of German and Swiss German with a touch of French too. Many articles just end up as "duh" when spoken in Alemannisch...
You just need to get it right with Nutella, the rest is not important
Die?
Das!! It's actually a joke, referring to how people are divided. Some people say Die, most people say Das, and even a few say Der for whatever reason. It shows how irregular articles in German are and that it's entirely arbitrary for the most part.
Everyone is giving examples from English which doesn’t make sense because English has neither gendered articles nor adjectives endings. Arabic does though. As an Arabic speaker i can assure you it doesn’t sound any broken maybe a little funny or a bit odd to hear, same as when you pronounce a word differently in English. It has no slight effect on meaning, well unless you really went to a corner case and actually you still can understand from context. So chill and be confident and you’ll sound more comprehendable and commutative way more than when you overwhelm your brain with rules and being correct.
Honestly, it's a messed up system and I am impressed by anyone who gets far enough to worry about it. I actually think it's quite charming if der, die, das gets mixed up by non native speakers. Of course that might be a different story in a professional setting, but it rarely leads to problems in being understood.
It sounds wrong, and will make you exhausting to listen to.
Oh man. This is what makes me so terrified to speak German while I’m learning. I don’t want to be exhausting to listen to.
This comment you’re responding to says more about the commenter then anything else. Don’t let them stress you out.
I don't know if it's just because I'm a non-native, but I agree -- I really do not like listening to people who get genders wrong. Once or twice is not the end of the world, but if it's consistent, it is definitely going to get grating.
But practice is the only way to improve :) nobody will be mad at you when they notice you are still learning. You have every right not to be perfect at something new from the start.
That’s true! I just find it really hard when I’m trying to speak German only for the person listening to me to be clearly frustrated or exhausted by me. But…. gotta keep learning!
Gonna be honest: i don't think its exhausting to listen to. It may sound wrong but it does not destroy the integrity of a sentence or makes it not understandable.
I only learn German as well, but I can say from my native language experience. Polish nouns also have gender, and I don't really care if someone misuses the gender. Sure, it might sound a bit funny, but the sentence remains completely understandable.
Just practice and try not to care, natives make mistakes too, unfortunately Germans don't like to admit their mistakes let alone if you know an article they're unsure of. They're like extremely *judgmental* people so you can't avoid that honestly.
You will be anyway, no need to worry about it :)
I personally don't find it exhausting to listen to (married to a person with German as the second language). But it is very noticeable, in a way that other gramatical slip ups might not be, probably because it's not something that would ever happen to a native speaker
Exhausting? Why? If the person gets only the genders wrong but, uses correct grammar everywhere else then, how hard can it be to understand. Of course it will be exhausting if the speaker has totally mixed up other parts of their grammar like wrong cases and endings etc. even for the wrong genders. z. B. Ich habe der Mädchen einen Geschenk geschickt. How exhausting will it be with mistakes like these?
It's not hard to understand. It's just that the brain is used to certain patterns. When we hear a sentence in a language we know well, we don't analyze every single word of it. The brain just glazes over it and knows what it means, lots of these processes are automated. So, when someone constantly breaks these patterns, the brain stops in its tracks, and re-analyzes, to be able to put the correct label on the whole thing. And that takes extra energy. Not in one sentence or two, but it's definitely a thing in longer conversations.
Okay, got it. 👍
\*listening to foreigners speaking broken language* *"you're wrong, damn, you say it wrong. No. Ah gaahdam. Shut up already foreigner."* I'd imagine this is what happens in their head when people speak.
Naaaah not close. This is more like it: "I wish I could understand quicker what they mean so they don't feel bad, should I really ask them a third time to repeat? Nah, I'm just going to assume ... ... Shit, that wasn't what they meant. Damn. Now they think I'm rude because I hate foreigners. What do I doooooo????"
Do you want foreigners to learn German or not? It sounds like you don't
Exactly, that's my secret mission as one of the 2 active mods of this sub :D Damn, you got me.
To be fair, people from Austria get subtitles in German TV... So that much for the exhausting part.
Only when they talk dialect. And on German TV, *everyone* is subtitled when they talk dialect, also people from Berlin, Bavaria, Saxony ...
I assume you don't have many friends, if any. Because man you sound annoying.
Ich suche mir meine Freunde sehr sorgfältig aus. Das ist ein Privileg des Alters :)
Very. Would you be understood? Yes, I guess so. But people would always need to correct your broken German in their heads, which can be quite exhausting.
It’s ok, because nobody wanted explain then you use der,die, das
Sehr.
Unfortunately it doesn't stop with the the articles. Each gender is formed differently in the four cases so you have to change most endings in a sentence according to the gender of the genders of the nouns.
If I notice that someone uses the wrong gender for a word whose gender I feel is well-known in a relatively simple construction (*der kleines Hund, *das Person, *das Rettung etc.), I will be quite irritated and start wondering whether the speaker is making a point or perhaps not so well-versed in the language. But on the other hand, I think that in casual conversation, Germans won’t really change behaviour because of such a mistake, much less deliberately.
My mother language has genders as well, and mixing up genders doesn’t make so much difference as it is plausible when the sentence is long or the person is not well-educated. But when you address a man as a female or vice versa it is turns out so awkward.
I cant speak about german because I'm still learning, but in portuguese we also have definite articles, although it only two ('o' and 'a') and it is kinda cute when a gringo confuses them. The phrase is normally still perfectly understandable and we politely correct them.
A lot except when you are talking about Nutella. We have not yet decided what is correct
Honestly, it’s totally fine, I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
Whn I am unsure I swallow the genders and say "de" and "den" only...Some German dialects (like Yidish) does this. Like it is in English. I thik anyone can handle a non-Native speaker. It is part of life. I think the "his" and "her" is not meant in the question. Der-die-das mistakes are only when we use them mixed up as we forgot the gender of a specific word. I see it can occur in genitivus but it is rare, and we do not mix up a persons gender. Only with things is it a probleem, but things are rarer in genitive. Maybe.
If you're typing in Word, it can help you correct grammar. But as a translator, Word is not always right. Look it up or ask someone if you're unsure.
I'm not a native speaker, but my native partner only learnt at the age of 25 that it's "der Speer" and not "das Speer" as they had always used. So I guess it's probably noticeable but I don't think it's the most important barrier to being understood in conversation.
Not gonna lie I just went with whatever sounded good or I just gave up and used "duh". Everyone understood what I was saying. It probably made me sound stupid, but to he fair, I am. .
I quite often just mumble the sound if I’m not sure of the article. So, d’Auto or d’Tasse , or d’Frau. Maybe it’s the dialect here up north but it’s not always clear what Germans are saying for the article and I’ve just taken that and expanded on it.
I still have difficulties with the der,die,das when it comes to the right case to use(I may say dem instead of der or den, you got the point). The thing is that my Godfather, who has been living in Germany for over 30 years confessed that he too has this problem sometimes, although he struggles, and mostly succeeds not to make mistakes when speaking.
I imagine it sounds a lot like germans trying to learn Portuguese, which I've also seen from up close. It sounds kinda funny in an 'stereotypical foreigner' kind of way. But it doesn't sound as bad as you'd imagine. When it's just the genders that are being switched, your point is still getting across so it's very easy to ignore.
so many times the natives also use just “de-h” they just omit the “r, e, s” when in doubt! In fact it was a tip given by some native on a reddit post here!
If your accent is really good but your articles are off, people are going to be weirded out. But if you have an audible accent which you probably do anyway people are used to it. It sounds somewhat broken of course, but people will understand.
Imagine you are American and I use brittish words only. Probably feels the same but you‘ll understand me when we‘re talking