Learning German Tips-So many “the”s and “a”s

Hello.
As my mother language doesn’t really have an article, it was difficult for me to learn articles.
But when I learned it, as a foreign language, it was not any longer difficult, because there were no confusions surrounding the article itself. The “article” was foreign from the beginning.

But I think, for the learners whose first language had an article system. it would also be difficult all along, because it gets mixed up with the knowledge of original language.

For example, there are 4 types of “the” and “a” in German for words in Singular (masculine, feminine, and neutral), and Plural.

So one needs a long (actually very long) time to adjust oneself to this new system. In order to minimize the confusion. In my case it took almost two months, although my own language doesn’t have an article and I learned German for 3 hours every weekday.

The book I introduced to you before, called Der, Die, Das from Hueber publishing company is good book to focus on this German article system.

But I think more important thing is to have patience, for example, it took almost a year to understand the system of German articles correctly..
And to try to be open to the new system!!!

By the way, I found some insightful videos from Youtube on learning German.

I hope these videos may help you.

1. Video from Steve Kaufmann-lingosteve (Polyglot!!!) Watching his video feels like listening to a good counselor sitting across.

2. Ten Tips on learning German from Tim Simmer, I think it works for learning any language

3. Collection of German Pronunciations in Youtube WOW!
https://www.youtube.com/user/deutscheaussprache/videos