The part I mostly don't get is why I didn't study sooner, and why the fuck the Germans would tolerate so many exceptions and so on in the case system.
Would you mind to get more specific?
Der Das Die - okay.
Dem Dem Der - . . . and then of course In + Dem = im, an + dem = am
Den Das Die - so now we have in das = ins, auf das = aufs, etc.
But then we get into the differences between Wer, Wen, Wem--and why would we even need a difference between Wenn and Wann, and why are they so similar? And Wohim/Woher/Wo. It's like they're shooting question words out of a rapid-fire cannon here or something.
And all of the okay, when do we say
Mein/meine vs. meinen/mein/meine vs. meinem/meiner (and all the same things for the indefinite article, i.e. einen/ein/eine)
And that's not even getting into pronouns, which are also absurdly complicated. It's cool that the formal is absorbed into the feminine pronoun, but all of this "Okay, when ihn... when ihm... when ihr... when Ihr... when Ihren" is driving me bonkers.
Oh, and you know what?
The past tense! Why would you even do that? Shreiben but geshrieben, treffen but getroffen, bringen but gebracht, and I'm not even getting into seperable prefix absurdity.
Or the difficulties of trying to pluralize
anything. And the long words like "Schreibwarengeschäft," which are regrettably starting to appear more normal. And the lack of gender rules, other than "Well, if it's got e at the end it's probably female."
And they haven't even taught us adjectives yet. Or how to say "if." No conditionals! No food words! No nothing! No, seriously--they didn't teach us to say "nothing" yet.
Yeah, I don't know if it's the class or the language, but I'm not too happy.