I have lately been making an effort to drop the Bernese glottal "duh" & made a concerted effort to work on my Der, Die, Das ...

Couple of tricks that I have picked up :

all words ending in ung are Die : heizung, umbgebung, rechnung etc ...

all words ending in eit are also Die : moglicheit, krankheit, zeit etc ...

anyone have any other tips on Der, Die, Das they wish to share ??

Always:
masculine: words ending in -ismus -ling -or
Feminine: words ending in -ung -heit -keit -schaft -ion -ei -ur
neutral: words ending in -chen -lein

"meistens" Most timesss
masculine: words ending in -er
feminine: words ending in -e
neutral: words ending in -um -ment

Masculine:
weekdays, months, seasons, times of day
most alcohols

Feminine:
most plants
most nouns derived from verbs (fahren --> die Fahrt)

Neutral:
verbs that are nouns in the infinitive (essen --> das essen)
and adjectives to nouns (gut --> das Gute)

Hope that helps some.

I took a Swiss German class last year and got some of the skinny on this. Actually in most Swiss German the 'Duh' or "d'" as in "d'Schwiiz" is actually "die". Der is 'dr', and das is "z" or "s" as in 'Z gafaellt's mi.

Nobody seems to notice all that much though. ;-)

Guten Tag

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/German_grammar

Tschüss !

Almost - "Der Dung" (EN = "dung")... not the most common word though and to be honest, I don't know any rules on the German stuff, it just came to my mind... so I don't want to offend or confuse anybody with this post - just a bit joking ;-)

thanks Andres, have now got an office full of Auslanders sniggering ...

I think our company web monitoring software just burst a blood vessel...

Same here, the site is forbidden

AFAIK, the only exception is das bier.

To the excellent list from Chemgoddess I would like to add:

Maskulin:
Directions: der Norden, der Osten
Weather: der Regen, der Wind Exception: die Wolke
Makes of car: der Mercedes, der Audi

Feminin:
Motorbikes: die Yamaha, die Suzuki

Neutral:
Colours: das Blau, das Rot

I have another tip and was hoping someone could expand upon it.

"Most" (there are exceptions) regular german verbs can be converted to the past tense by simply adding a (t) after the verb stem (sagen, heissen, hören, hoffen, kaufen etc).

sagen

Ich sage (I say) --> Ich sagte (I said)
Du sagst (you say) --> du sagtest (you said)

arbeiten

Ich arbeite (I work) --> Ich arbeitete (I worked)
Du arbeitest (you work) --> Du arbeitetest (you worked)

Irregular verbs are a bit different.

It seems that most verbs with a stem change of e --> i in present tense have an e --> a change in the past tense(examples: essen, vergessen, sprechen, geben, helfen) then if in the present tense the verb stem ends with an t, you just drop it.

Ich esse (I eat) --> Ich aß (I ate)

du vergisst (you forget) --> du vergaß (You forgot)

except for the Ihr conjugation the t remains

Ihr aßt or Ihr vergasst

Obviously this doesn't work 100% of the time but hopefully it helps a little.

If anybody has any tips for future tense or anything to add for past tense I'd love to hear it.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Swiss
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Switzerland

• Future tense is formed with an auxiliary verb: werden.
  • ich werde
  • du wirst
  • er/sie/es wird
  • wir werden
  • ihr werdet
  • sie werden

• ...and with the present infinitive of the verb. The infinitive always ends in -n, the most common endings are -en (e.g. gehen, verstehen), -eln (e.g. wedeln, pendeln) and -ern (e.g. vergrössern, verbessern).

• Like every conjugated verb, the auxiliary verb comes on second position in declarative sentences. The infinitive comes last, after all the other components (subject, objects and adverbs) that might be there.
  • Die Preise werden im August steigen.
  • Nächste Woche werde ich in die Talacker-Bar kommen.

• The future tense of a passive verb is made with the normal auxiliary verb and the passive form of the infinitive, which includes another werden.
  • Die Preise werden im August angehoben werden.
  • Nächste Woche werde ich in die Talacker-Bar gezerrt werden.

• In practise people often go back to the present passive tense, because two "werden" is a bit clumsy:
  • Die Preise werden im August angehoben.
  • Nächste Woche werde ich in die Talacker-Bar gezerrt.

• In subordinate clauses, the auxiliary verb moves to the first position, the infinitive stays at the end. No matter if the infinitive is passive or active.
  • Weil die Nachfrage steigt, werden die Preise im August steigen.
  • Weil die Nachfrage steigt, werden die Preise im August angehoben werden.
  • Obwohl ich kein Geld habe, werde ich nächste Woche in die Talacker-Bar kommen.
  • Obwohl ich kein Geld habe, werde ich nächste Woche in die Talacker-Bar gezerrt werden.

---

And another der/die/das hint: Nouns ending on -ion are always feminine: die Information, die Attraktion, die Konversation, die Sensation...

its official, I now have a headache ...

"Schön! Du machst es sehr einfach"

Thanks for the tips chemgoddess ... the past tense always stumps me!... I'm a bit confoosed though... I saw somewhere that in helfen the e changes to an o... . Have I been stuffing it up all this time?

That's another tense (I think present perfect or past perfect or whatever is equivalent):

I never learned German the hard way, but I guess the e --> a is correct, and we might add the e --> a --> o (at least for some words, it works):

helfen - half - geholfen.
sprechen - sprach - gesprochen

Ah, You're confusing:

I helped, with I had helped.

"Ich half" vs. "Ich hatte geholfen"

OK thanks ...and Thoean, too. Much appreciated.

...could I plead that I was just using the full on Schwiezer Dootsch accent?

Lucky you for being a native speaker

Whenever I come up with my own little ways for remembering how the conjugation works and I run them past my native german speaking friends the response is always, "I never thought of it, but yeah I guess you're right, it does work that way"

And of course it doesn't work for all instances but anything that can simplify even a little and get someone into the language is useful.