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Being a Jew in Russia? I think for every Jew in Russia the answer would be different. I grew up in a provincial Russian town with very few Jews and even less antisemitism. But from the early age I was made aware that the Jews weren't as good as or equal to the Russians. Below are some of my memories from 30-20 years ago. Things are probably different now, but now I live in the US.I am 7 years old. I run around with neighborhood kids and hear them yelling "kike, kike, stinky kike." I don't know exactly what it means, but are ready to yell with them. Suddenly, everyone looks at me and... a "stinky kike" is actually me! Why?! What did I do?! Panic is raising in my throat ... An old lady that sits on the bench under the tree looks at my stricken face with pity and tells the kids: "You, gangsters, let a poor little Yid be." Everyone laughs and yells: "Stinky kike, little stinky kike." I run home crying "Why?! I don't want to be a kike!" Only my grandma is at home. She rocks me, strokes my hair, and tells me "It's ok, bubele, it's ok, we are Jews. Now you know." "But why do they hate me? Why do they call me stinky." And in a long-long conversation I learn that I am different, that Russia is for Russians and they don't like us very much. The whole history suddenly falls on me like a ton of bricks with pogroms, the deaths, the gas chambers, and I understand that nothing is going to be the same anymore, because now I am a Jew.I am 10 and a teacher asks if everyone in class is Russian. I am on fire: what shall I do?! What if they laugh or say something? I get up and say that I am a Jew. My classmates laugh, but not too much and I calm down. During the break I hear two teachers talking: "These kikes are at your face all the time. Adults and kids are the same. Shameless show offs. Squeeze themselves in every little whole. Attention seekers. That is why this little kike made a scene today. No one likes them for reason." My teachers! The very authorities don't like us, the Jews. But I didn't do anything wrong, I said the truth, as I should have! Why then? And I get the second lesson: there are different standards for them and us.I'm 13 and the phrase "time to leave it" is a permanent feature in our house. I hear that A. can't get to a grad school despite best grades, B. got a postcard "Jews, get out from our land", C. was pass up for promotion, D. is a refusnik and no one has hired him for the last four years. I don't want to leave Russia, my friends, my school, my books, everything I know. I'm afraid of unknown and I don't want the change. What if kids in a new country are mean? And I don't speak their language. However, the parents talk about lost opportunities and seem to become more serious. Eventually the threats are gone: my grandma is too fragile for such a journey, but I am now clear that Russia isn't my home and my beloved Russian language and literature are not mine to keep. We, the Jews, aren't welcome here.I'm 14 and my father explains to me the quota. Jews represent 2% of the population of the Soviet Union, therefore of all future college students only 2% could be Jews. But what if more than 2% are deserving admission or good jobs? And I learn the words government antisemitism.I'm 16 and am applying for my passport. I hear my parents discussing an option of paying a bribe to sign my nationality- a required field in Russian passports-as Belorussian or Russian, because our last name can pass for Belorussian. The line nationality isn't a choice, it's based on the nationality of one' parents which is identified in a birth certificate. In every document- library card, child care application, college or job application, etc.- the nationality has to be identified. "Life would be so much easier for her." my mother says. Every night I hear their discussions, but then finally they reject it: "We are Jews, its a hard thing to be, but she should learn to be proud of who she is." Next day I go to the library to find books about history of Jews. There are no books about Jews at all! Nothing. But I am now on a mission to learn about who the Jews are and why they are treated differently. I want to be proud to be Jewish.I am 17, applying to college. I do well on my oral exam, but the professor is giving me a 4 ( there are only 5, 4, and 3 grades in Russia. 2 is a failure). I am disappointed and am asking professor why? He advises me to think about it on my way home. That's ok, my dad tells me, it's actually good. You'll work 10-20 times as hard to be where the natives are. It builds character. And I understand what Jewish humor and optimism is.That is getting too long, but I'm sure you got the picture.And another thing, Russia is a great country and Russian people are great. I have many Russian friends and they are respectful, non-bias, open minded, wonderful people. However, these memories are true and they formed me as Jew.

Top 10:Know thy articles! Start here:and here:Sentence orders: a) Subject-Verb-Object for normal sentences and W-questions b) Verb-Subject-Object for yes/no-questions or orders and c) Verb at the end for side-clausesLearn when to use the Accusative as it is the most important case after the Nominative (the case used for the who in who is doing what, and the case that usually doesn't cause any trouble):Understand that there are only 2 tenses that you will need until late B2: The Präsens for present & future events and the Perfekt for the past.Learn your irregular verbs: German Verb Conjugations - Meister der Konjugation. My video course and grammar ebook for level A1 also contains a really neat technique on how to memorize all relevant irregular verbs in less than 2 hours. Then use the App above to practice them.To ask for things politely or express your desires also called wishes you will need the Konjunktiv II which is very (!) simple: use a form of "würden" (=would) + Infinitive. One example: Ich würde gerne einen Kaffee bestellen. (=I would "like" a coffee to-order) The forms of "würden" are: ich würde, du würdest, es würde, wir würden, ihr würdet, sie würden. Done. Next.Learn words, words, words. Find a beautiful technique on page 72 of my free preview of my A1 German Grammar eBook: https://smartergerman.com/shop/ebook-german-crystal-clear-level-a1-free-preview/ and please do yourself the favor and use the … ready made memrise course for Die Tote Frau im Garten which will save yourself a lot (!) of time.Get a book and start reading it. Here's the book that I have already prepared the vocab for at memrise (see #7). https://smartergerman.com/shop/easy-reader-die-tote-frau-im-garten-beginner-level-full-version/ Any other book will do, too, yet you'd have to enter the new vocab into our own memrise course yourself. Do not exceed 25-30 words per level if you intend to do so.Find a conversation partner.Know what's expected of you and check out these freely available model exams (there's also videos showing you samples of an oral exam of each level): Goethe-Zertifikat B1 (other levels you will find in the left sidebar of that page)Enjoy what you are doing, that mainly means that you should connect German to the things you love to do most as then it will not feel like work. It'll still be an awful lot of work, but it won't feel like it.I know the last four points are not actually grammar rules but they are rules of highly efficient German learning. I hope that these tips will help you getting started. There is much more to the German language and learning it but this will cover quite a lot of your path to your aim of proficiency.

Pretty much all of them.One of the first things you realize, when you study linguistics, is that language—every language—is filled with an amazing amount of complexity and regularity to the point of defying description. And I mean that literally. There is not one single natural language that has been completely formalized at all levels of description in any way.Think about that for a second.Even English grammar, the ins and outs of which have been studied by thousands of people for centuries, has not been completely described. You can't go anywhere and pick up a book or look up a computer program that has all the rules of English. Thus, there is no documented list of the rules an English speaker is supposed know and so most native speakers don't really "know" most of the rules of English.So what are English teachers teaching you in school and what are William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White (Strunk & White, The Elements of Style) getting all in a huff about?Elwyn White's gonna get all up in ur grammarThe rules people talk about—in blogs, in English class, in ESL classes and so on —are:1) Rules that are in the process of changing, e.g., How do I stop being annoyed by people using literally as an intensifier?2) Rules that carry inordinate weight as social signals (e.g., gonna, ordangling participles: Where you at? or even Where are you from? instead of From where are you?)3) Rules that are particularly confusing to newcomers (e.g., adjective order, the example mentioned in the original question)4) Rules that are cool and/or funny (e.g. the other answers here)The fact of the matter is that almost everything we know about our native languages is what's called implicit knowledge. Stuff we don't know that we know, or stuff that we can't really describe, but we can do anyway. Like maybe riding a bike, or walking.So what are some examples?Let's start with one of the most basic examples I can think of:Phonetics: How do you pronounce the letter p?Easy, right? Well, there are actually a number of different ways p is articulated in English.Compare, for example, spot and pot. They sound the same to an English speaker, but put your hand an inch from your mouth when you say the two words and you'll notice a much bigger puff of air for the p in pot.Indeed, in other languages, they're two completely different sounds.Aaaannnnddd if you cut the s off the word spot you're left with something that actually sounds like bot, not pot.Native English speakers never make a mistake here, but don't even know they're doing this complicated articulatory gymnastics, saying p differently in different contexts; "it's just p," we think.The same holds for pretty much every phoneme (sounds letters) in something called Allophony: The phonemes t and k also adhere to this Aspiration rule; t is also involved in a flapping rule (the t in duty is d-like, which speakers may actually know because: doody!!!!!!!); l is different in the onset vs. coda of a syllable (look vs. cool) and so on and on and on.Indeed, we can go through all the levels of linguistic description: phonetics, phonology, morphophonology, morphosyntax, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and pick out some of the most basic rules and pinpoint discrepancies in explicit knowledge.Phonology: What makes something sound like an English word?There are dozens, if not hundreds, of rules governing where sounds can go in a word, i.e., Phonology, that most speakers are not aware of. If I ask you does zbashk or sneeld sound more like a real word, every native English speaker would answer the same way, Russian speakers would answer differently, but without much insight into why. (The reason I say this is not because it means native English speakers are ignorant, but even linguists haven't figured out the precise details of how people make word-likeness judgements).Morphophonology: How does pronunciation change when you add affixes to a word?The stress in parent is syllable 1, add a suffix, -hood, and it's still syllable 1, parenthood, but add -al and it shifts: parental. Why the difference?Another one: you may know why some words are un- and other words are in- as in unable but incapable (hint: it's primarily word origin). You might have even noticed that in- assimilates to the follow sound (e.g., illegible, impossible, irregular). But why not umbelievable? Or ullimited?The answer has to do with whether there are serial levels, or strata, of processing in morphophonology—a debate still raging today—with in- being in an earlier stratum (before consonant assimilation) and un- being in a later stratum.Morphosyntax: When do you use accusative case pronouns?To provide an example of something that we think we know, but we actually don't: When do we use the accusative form of pronouns in English (me, him, her, them)? When it's the object of the sentence, Object Pronouns Grammar Rules, right? Well, not quite. Consider the following:Q: Who wants cake?A: MeMe and John went to the storeShe thinks I am smartShe considers me to be smart.She considers me smart.The rules of case assignment just got real.... complicated.So real that linguists still aren't quite sure how it works. (I bring up this question mainly because it was on my Master's orals exams and is one of those deceptively hard questions. More in the comments!)Syntax: What is English word order?How about something as basic as can be: word order?English is subject-verb-object, right?Well, that rule I don't like so much. (interjection, object, subject, verb, adverbial phrase).Semantics: How do you interpret words like some and every?Semantics, I know the least about, but consider these two sentences:There is someone who loves everyone.Everyone is loved by someone.The second sentence can mean what the first sentence means, but it can also mean that everyone has some person that loves them, but it can be all different somebodies.(Lame, I know, but like I said, I don't really know semantics (: )Pragmatics: Who gets talked about next in a discourse?Conversation is complicated. If you actually listen to recordings of your conversations it's any wonder that anyone understood anything. One of the really hard parts is reference resolution (e.g., Page on Nyu). When you say he or she or her or his, who the heck are you talking about?Well, one "rule" that I explored with a colleague (Rohde & Ettlinger, 2013 Page on Northwestern) is that certain verbs implicate certain arguments as the topic of conversation. So, in John annoyed Tom because he ... you presume he refers to John whereas John admired Tom because he ... means you're more likely to then talk about Tom.Without these little rules of conversation, we'd be lost when talking to each other. But they are rules that you aren't generally taught and they are rules we generally aren't aware of.And they are rules that we haven't even pinned down particularly well. Reference resolution is one of the hard problems for natural language processing.Wait, Dave, are you talking about John or Tom?Indeed, if we knew the rules of English, it wouldn't be so hard to program a computer to follow them. But we don't, so we can't.So, in this small selection of rules, I actually tried to pick the most mundane things I could: How do you pronounce p? What is English word order? When do you use accusative case? How do you figure out who pronouns refer to? How do you add suffixes to a word?Not the funniest or trickiest, but the ones that show that even the most fundamental aspects of grammar, the rules that allow us to communicate in even the most basic ways, fly below the radar of our awareness.