My 13-year-old daughter has just discovered noun cases in German. What had previously seemed a friendly language (“the man” is der Mann) suddenly pulls off the mask to reveal an insanely involved grammar: den Mann, dem Mann, des Mannes. And because schools are perverse, she is starting this journey exactly at the age when a child’s inborn language-learning ability nosedives. Years of pain lie ahead.
我13歲的女兒剛剛接觸了德語的名詞變格。這門之前看似友好的語言（比如英語的男人「the man」在德語裏是「der Mann」）突然扯下面具，露出猙獰的複雜語法：den Mann, dem Mann, des Mannes（男人一詞的各種變格，譯者注）。而且由於學校課程設置不合理，她展開這段旅程的年齡，正是一個小孩先天語言學習能力急劇下降的時候，等待她的將是多年的痛苦學習。
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