AMD2

   For this activity I read Mark Twain's essay "The Awful German Language." In the essay Twain points out a lot of the same problems I imagine most of us are having. The one that sticks out to me as the most difficult problem is knowing which form of a word to use in the nominative, dative, accusative, and genitive cases. This is tough especially considering I'm still not completely sure how to identify each of these cases. Twain also complains out the gender assignment of words at great length. He is pretty funny in doing so. Actually, he tries to be funny throughout the whole essay. At one point he mentions that he tried to kill any stranger who says 'sie' to him. Anyway, the gender assignment thing doesn't bother me as much because I've just accepted it in my head. Things are assigned a gender and there is really no good way of being able to tell what gender a thing might be. I imagine that through repetition these grammar issues can be resolved. Oh, reading this essay also helped me identify some things that I should work on in order to develop a better understanding of the language. Or at the very least develop a better base of knowledge that I can use to pass future German tests. I'd recommend skimming over Twain's essay to any classmate who is interested in reading something that's humorous, informative, and pertains to an English-speaker's perspective on the German language.