Adjective declensions have always been a huge headache for me and I believe, for many other students learning German as well.

I think the main reason for that is the difference across languages. In Chinese, there is no gender for nouns, which means no “der, die, das” and therefore all declensions of adjectives are identical. In English, it works more or less the same way. When I learn German as a foreign language, I can’t help but using English as reference. When there is a conflict between these languages, it would make learning extra hard. According to our teacher, the problem that most struggle with are “Dativ” and “Adjektivdeklination”, probably due to the various forms for different situations.

So far it seems there is no way else but to learn it and memorize it though exercises. Just think of it as when kids acquire languages. Maybe it’s time to quit asking why and try tackling the problem in a more primitive method: repeating and repeating until it becomes automatic.

Yang