German class last night! We studied the dative, and the bizarre dative plural -n. In general, German declension seems to be "tattered," filled with remnant consonants and half-declined adjectives which are driving my fellow students crazy. Dative is a hard concept for many English speakers, especially since den Mann is accusative masculine singular, but den Frauen is dative feminine plural. 'The young woman" is die junge Frau and "the young women" is die jungen Frauen, but "young women" is junge Frauen. And all adjectives in the dative have n - der jungen Frau, den jungen Frauen.
And then there are the pronouns! Sie and ihr (the Germans may use capitals, but you can't hear a capital letter) overlap a great deal, and ihnen only partially ameliorates this. In context, however, the meaning is usually clear.
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