Friday, March 20, 2020

Kids Care About... essays

Kids Care About... essays Kids care about many more things than most people think. The popular misconception these days is that kids only care about themselves or anything that makes them happy. In contrast, many kids care deeply about a wide variety of issues surrounding them, and their input can be very beneficial to solving problems both now and in the future. Kids care about their families. Kids take pride in their relatives, whether outwardly or to themselves, because they know that these are the people that will stand by them through thick and thin. Kids also know that they have a lot in common with the members of their family, both immediate and extended. In that respect, taking pride in family is a larger version of taking pride in ones self. Kids care about others. When a child knows someone who is having problems, or maybe just a bad day, that child is one of the first and only people that can brighten that someones day or life. Kids stick together and are always willing to help each other. This is evident in many schools today in the form of student-led mediation groups. Students can come to other students and talk about their problems at school, at home, or maybe even at work. Kids trust other kids, and kids are willing to be that helping hand to others. Kids care about their school. If kids did not care about their school, their would be no cheerleaders, no fans at the games, no pep sessions, no participation in extracurricular activities, and no standing up for your school when someone puts it down. When someone talks bad about your school, they are in essence talking bad about you, and many kids are proud of their school and will defend it to others. Kids also care about the well being and future of their schools. Student government and other specialized clubs, such as foreign language or journalism clubs, work together with students and faculty to make their respective programs better for today and tom ...

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Understanding the German Article and Pronoun Ihr

Understanding the German Article and Pronoun Ihr Often at times German learners are confused about „ihrâ€Å" (and friends). No wonder because entering „ihrâ€Å" into google translate provides us with the following list: hertheiryour (Sir/Ma’am)to heryou-all If I have five options to choose from in any other than my native language, I’d be confused too. Luckily I grew up with German. But you probably have not been so fortunate (from a language learning point of view of course) so let me bring some light into your darkness. The problem is the missing awareness regarding the differences between an article and a pronoun.   If I segregate the above list of possible translations into these two categories things will get a bit clearer already:       Article                               Pronoun      her (car)                            to her (can’t put „carâ€Å" here      their (car)                         you all (can’t put „carâ€Å" here)      your (Sir/Ma’am)                   A few examples:   Ã‚     Ihre Mutter kommt am Wochenende zu Besuch.  Ã‚  Ã‚     Her / Their / Your mother comes to visit this weekend.  Ã‚  Ã‚      Notice that there’s no difference in „ihreâ€Å" whether you say „herâ€Å", „theirâ€Å" or „yourâ€Å".   Ã‚     Ich gebe ihr einen Kuss.         Ã‚  Ã‚      I give her a kiss  Ã‚      There is no noun after „ihrâ€Å"   Ã‚     Ihr kà ¶nnt hier nicht bleiben.            Ã‚  Ã‚     You (people) can’t stay here.  Ã‚     Ã‚   There is no noun after „ihrâ€Å" If you are able to distinguish an article from a pronoun, you improve your chances of making the right choice. Do you know what the difference between these two is? An article is never on it’s own. It is always (!) accompanied by a noun (words that can have   Ã‚     a „theâ€Å" in front of them like „the carâ€Å"). Articles come in various forms: der, ein-, mein-, dies-,  welch-, kein-A pronoun stands pro-noun i.e. for a noun which means that it makes any noun redundant.   With „ihrâ€Å" this is a bit tricky but let me take another pronoun to illustrate this.   Ã‚     Ã¢â‚¬Å¾sein Autoâ€Å"  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚     vs  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã¢â‚¬Å¾ihn  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   his car                                        him (car?) Testing your understanding Can you identify the pronouns and the articles in the following sentences?   Ã‚     Sie fragte ihren Mann nach seiner Meinung.  Ã‚     Aber ihr Mann antwortete ihr nicht.  Ã‚     She asked her husband for his opinion.                But her husband didn’t answer her.       [Scroll down to the end of this article to find the answer.] Did you find all pronouns and articles? Good. Then let’s move on. Endings Now what’s with the endings? Articles as well as pronouns can have endings and those depend on the noun that they are accompanying or replacing. Two examples:   Ã‚     Kennst du ihren Mann?  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Do you know her husband?  Ã‚     Nein, ihren kenne ich nicht, aber deinen.      No, hers I don’t know, but yours. You will have noticed that the article „ihren (Mann)â€Å" as well as the pronoun „ihrenâ€Å" do both have the same ending as they both refer to „Mannâ€Å". Grammatically speaking „Mannâ€Å" is masculine and stands in the accusative case. But looking at the English translation you will realize that there is a clear difference between those as a comparison of „herâ€Å" and „hersâ€Å" show. So far it even seems that it doesn’t matter at all whether we have an article in front of us or a pronoun. That calls for one more example:   Ã‚     Magst du ihr Auto?  Ã‚     Do you like her car?   Ã‚     Nein, ihres mag ich nicht, aber deins.      No, hers I don’t like, but yours. And now we finally have a difference. The following table should illustrate the differences in another form:                                 Article                         Pronoun masculine       ihr.x Mann                  ihrer neuter                ihr.x Auto                     ihres feminine          ihre Freundin             ihre plural                  ihre Freundinnen    ihre Another interesting observation is that a pronoun always has an article ending while an article at times doesnt (ihr.x Mann).  This is due to the fact that there are three cases in which there is no ending at the end of an article:                                    masc.  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚     neuter  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚     feminine  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚     plural Nominative  Ã‚     ein                   ein  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚      Accusative                                 ein Dative Genitive In these three cases the following articles do not get an ending:  ein, mein (and all articles of the same family: dein, sein, ihr, unser, euer, ihr), kein In all other cases they always have an ending which corresponds with those of the pronouns. Summary To summarize: articles and pronouns often  look alike and can only be distinguished by their companion or a lack of it.article- and pronoun endings only differ in three cases (see last table)pronouns replace a noun and therefore are never found directly next to a noun This video helps you a bit  with the basic (personal) pronouns, er, es and sie. Là ¶sung from above:   Ã‚     Sie (pronoun) fragte ihren Mann (article) nach seiner Meinung (article).   Ã‚  Ã‚     Aber ihr Mann (article) antwortete ihr (pronoun) nicht.