Adjective endings have been giving me a hard time. The table memorizing and the stumbling when speaking . Ugh! However, I just came across a blog post that appears to be the solution to my problems!

I'm sure it's just one of those "how do you think/learn" things, but if we're on the same wavelength, you may benefit from this explanation of endings too!

The slightly easier way to learn German adjective endings

Just learn Swissgerman and the endings as well as the grammar dont matter so much

That's step two! I get a 20% increase in salary once I pass the B2 exam, plus I won't feel like a tool (as much) when I teach in German.

I am, in fact, looking forward to learning Swiss German though.

Thank you thank you thank you!

14 years (and counting!) of wrestling with adjective declension, and this is the first explanation that actually makes sense to me.

Thank you!

Excellent information. Thanks for sharing.

My German teacher, when pressed about endings, sagged in resignation and said, "Look, the ending -en is the most common one so if you are really stuck, use -en as the ending and you have more than a 50% chance of being right."

Looking at the table you can see out of the 48 possible endings, 26 of them are -en.

I always swallow my endings in a Swiss-German type of a way anyway but the cheat thing has always served me well.

<Boggle>

"Slightly" easier, perhaps, but still mind-numbingly stupid, and as impossible to get my head round as when someone tried to make me learn the definite articles by rote all those years ago back in school.

I was only able to really start speaking German when I gave up trying to be correct and now just use d' whenever I'm not sure. Works for me, pretty much all the time.

True, it's easier to just go for understanding when speaking. I do that too!

However, when I write message home to my students' parents or to my colleagues, I feel like a dope using the wrong endings and I hate spending so much time just trying to get a few sentences out. Fortunately for me, the method described above works much better than the rote memorization has in the past.