The Der Die Das Project

As anyone that’s ever tried learning another language knows, memorising all of the new vocabulary is generally the least of your troubles! Different languages have their own grammar rules and seemingly bizarre word ordering that often widely deviate from what we’re used to and the German language is no exception.

One such troublesome pest is the definite article and all sixteen different instances with which you can use them. The three main definitive articles 'der, die, and das' are used for masculine, feminine and plural, and neutral words, respectively. Still with me?

While trying to wrap all of this around my brain, I decided to apply colours to each articles’ gender. Masculine gets blue, feminine is paired with red, and neutral receives beige. I used the common mnemonic device of visualising what a new word sounds like or reminds me of in English, and then burned that image in my mind. I imagined all of these new objects and places I was learning about in their correlating colour. So because a market place is masculine, I just pictured an entire market scene (stalls, vendors, customers, fruit and veg—everything!) spray painted blue. And now I will never forget that it’s der Marktplatz!