German grammar for KISS people - episode 2
After a year, I can understand 75% of most conversations, of most texts, of most local TV crime series. When I feel confident, my mouth opens and the words flow to express what I have in mind. No translation. Just direct expression from wordless thought concepts to German. I hear myself, I repeat with all the words in the right order, then I try and repeat it again with the declensions and the usual "der, die, das [insert-German-word-here]?" question.
So far, so good.
In the process, I have discovered that what I was taught at school was entirely wrong: The German language doesn't follow straight disciplined rules. Noooo! Deutsch ist unregelmäßig! German is chocker full of exceptions.
Too few words borrowed from other languages are actually neutral (das).\Examples: die Email, der Film...
There are verbs that call imperatively for Dativ, no matter what. There are easily 40 of them, and many are used many times in the everyday life.
Examples: Ich danke dir, Ich glaube dir...
Shocking!
A search for list German verbs Dativ list will give you a few good sources.There's a vague general rule for how each preposition modifies the meaning of a verb, but the reality is that each association and meaning must be learned, one by one, by trial and error.
And for the occasional word I don't know, I pause and say the word in English or French, and it's very rare people don't figure out what I want to say.
Practice beats everything.