"The child drinks milk."
Translation:Das Kind trinkt Milch.
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There are no reasons to why or when the articles Der, die, and das are used. You must learn to memorize them, I suppose.
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The reason is the grammatical gender of the noun they accompany.
Der = masculine, das = neuter, die = feminine.
So you have to memorize the gender of the nouns. Try not to learn the noun on its own, but with its article. Learn "das Kind" = "the child" as opposed to "Kind" = "child".
I understand your explination, however it taught earlier that "Das Madchen" is a correct sentence, and if Das is neuter and Madchen is feminine, how does this make sense?
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I'm not a native speaker, just a learner, so feel free to research on your own.
A girl (Mädchen) has a feminine biological gender, but the grammatical gender is neuter. Any noun ending in "-chen" is a diminutive form (little blank), and automatically becomes a neuter noun (grammatically). In this case, "little maid". The version for boys would be Bübchen (little boy), but to my knowledge it really isn't used in daily life and der Junge (masculine grammatically) is the common word for boy. So little boys and little girls are still male and female, but grammatically they are neuter. Hope that helps a little and I didn't make it worse!
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It's a conjugation thing. In present tense, English only conjugates "to drink" two ways:
- Drink (I, you, we, you (plural), they)
- Drinks (he/she/it)
German, French, and I'm sure many, many, many more languages have multiple endings for verbs. In this case, "trinkt" is used in present tense for he/she/it, and you (plural) (er/sie/es, und ihr). "Trinke" is used in present tense for I (ich). So in this sentence, "das Kind" is an it (neuter) so the verb is written "trinkt". Here is the conjugation table for "trinken". I suggest you bookmark the website and use it often; not only for verbs, but it also helps with word forms (like when you start to wonder "Why is it Elefanten when it's obviously singular?"). When you do look up a word, click on "word forms". That's most likely what you're going to be using/looking for.
Hope that helps! If you have any further questions, the door to my office is always open. :)
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Thank you! Excellent description, I think i understand it now. Much appreciated!
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Ich trinke = I drink
Du trinkst = you (singular) drink
Er, sie, es trinkt = he, she, it drinks
trinkts doesn't exist.
I'm having a really hard time figuring out when tinkst, trinkt and trinke is used. Any tips?
They are illegular and have to be memorized: du trinkst, er/sie/es trinkt, ich trinke
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Can any fluent German speakers tell me if there is anything wrong with the way "Kind" is pronounced in the audio on Duolingo? They actually make it sound closer to the English word "kind," or like the cussy "c" word. Danke!
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What is the difference between trinkt, trinken, trinkst, and trinke?
