German Gender Problems and Solutions

It is well known that German is a language that seems to enjoy being difficult for the sake of being difficult. (We are all familiar with Mark Twain's famous ranting on "The Awful German Language".) Even the germanic neophyte knows that German has three genders for nouns: masculine (der), feminine (die) and neutral (das). A german spoon is masculine (der Löffel), a german fork is feminine (die Gabel), and a german knife is neutral (das Messer). However, as we have the distinction between I and me, she and her, he and him (not to mention the much neglected who and whom), German applies this declination to its nouns, creating 4 variations for the 3 genders, plus another for the plural. That means that there are 16 possible variations for the word "the", though there are only 6 words that are used for these 16 variations. "Der" can be masculine nominative, feminine dative or genitive, or plural dative or genitive, meaning it is much overworked as an article, but effectively upping one's chances of getting it right. (The full list of possibilities would be der, die, das, den, dem, and des).

So when one is learning German, how do you get around such complications? The answer is simple: Denglish. Denglish is the mixture of German and English, much like spanglish is the mixture of Spanish and English. These language combinations exist in many languages, and it makes it easier to sprinkle words of one language into the syntax of another. I love Denglish. If I am looking for my I.D., I can exclaim, "Where is my damn Ausweis?" It doesn't matter if it is mein verdammter Ausweis, meine verdammte Ausweis, or mein verdammtes Ausweis, because it is just a fucking Ausweis. No gender. No declination.

God bless English and its lack of gender.

(Bonus: For those of you learning German, it is actually "mein verdammter Ausweis", but only when it is existing in its nominative form, like when I am wondering where mein verdammter Ausweis is. When I am looking for it, it becomes accusative and is thus "meinen verdammten Ausweis",  but if I am seeking it, it becomes dative, and is thus "meinem verdammten Ausweis".)