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wnylib

(25,702 posts)

33. . Not unless you get all the grammar right.

Sat Mar 7, 2026, 10:36 PM

Saturday

That means getting the noun declensions, verb conjugations, gender endings, and noun/adjective agreement correct.

After 2 years of Latin, I took 2 years of German. Initially I thought it would be good to learn a modern language that I could speak, but ach mein Gott! German was worse grammatically. It also has 3 genders, noun declensions, verb conjugations, gender endings that change according to the grammatical role in the sentence, plus noun/adjective agreement in gender and number.

But, at least Latin noun endings indicate the gender for nearly all nouns. Not so in German. In German you have to memorize the gender of each noun with no clues from the noun ending.

Both of my mother's grandparents brought their families to the US from Germany. I swear they left in order to escape the language.

So in college, I studied Spanish.

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