Please help with German?

Question

I speak a fair bit of German but I was told the other day that in German speaking countries, they don't actually use der and das but only use die for everything. for example, die Hund. I was told that using Der and Das is considered to be 'posh', If anyone could help me with this, I'd appreciate it!

Also if I wanted to say sorry to someone for maybe bashing into them or something, is it just 'es tut mir leid,'

thanks in advance

Answer 1

The germans say that most people can't speak correct german, so I believe it that you hear a lot of die's. When I speak, I usually use also only die. There is a joke that half of all germans cannot speak german (meaning the east germans).. but anyways.

You can say 'tut mir leid' = informal sorry, for like on the street, when it should be formal, then say 'es tut mir leid', or 'Entschuldigung' = excuse me

Answer 2

This information is wrong. Der and Das are not posh.
In the German language every noun has a specific article similar to the English "the". It would be grammatically wrong to use just "Die".
Here some examples:
der Mann = the man
die Frau = the woman
das Kind = the child
das Haus = the house
der Hund = the dog
der Baum = the tree
Die Banane = the banana

Answer 3

In Switzerland, what I think I hear is people kind of cutting off the ends of the articles, so die sounds like d', der like de and das like da. But Swiss German totally confuses me, I could be way off.

Yeah, "Es tut mir leid" for "I'm sorry", or "Entshuldigung" (excuse me) if it's less of a bash, more a little bump, "Es tut mir wirklich leid" for "I'm really sorry" like if you actually knock them to the ground.

Answer 4

That is incorrect, all the genders are still used in daily speech. In daily life, many people use dative instead of gentive after certain prepositions (wegen dem Regen instead of the grammatically correct wegen des Regens). The correct genitive does sound 'posh' to some people. In some dialects, their is what grammar sees as a confusion between dative and accusative (mir vs. mich) but the basic nominative genders, der, die and das are alive and well.

Answer 5

I certainly heard Der and Das when we lived in Germany several years ago. It is still used in writing that I have seen online. There are three genders in German, male, female and neutral. If you don't KNOW which one to use, people will incorrectly use Die as the default. When we were there, that meant you were LAZY. LOL

Oh if we bumped into someone we were told, Enshuldigen Sie Bitte was the most appropriate response.
:)

Answer 6

I don't think it sounds 'posh', it sounds like you are educated. There is nothing wrong with that.

Answer 7

i dont speak german sorry