<Sorry this is such a late post! Wanted to do this last week. But I settled a time table to study for Mandarin this summer at least and pretty much decided on my HSK date.>
I always get confused by the use of 的，得 and 地 and so decided to recap about it by doing a little Google search. Found some useful websites that explain when to use which "DE".
的 acts almost like the equivalent of the possessive apostrophe S in the English language by indicating who possesses what. At the same time, it is not only indicative of someone owning or having something, but something having certain descriptive properties.
红色的笔， 浅蓝色的云， 他的女儿是个很漂亮的女孩子
The website that I found describes it as a direction, potential, degree and result complement. To be honest, I still don't really understand what exactly is a complement linguistically, but 得 is always used after a verb.
I personally find this the most confusing because I would read it as "DI" if I come across this character because that I was what I learnt it as, to mean land (地方 place，地板 floorboard，地球 globe/ earth).
However, it is usually used after an adjective. Differing from 的, which allocates an attribute to an item or a person (and hence may come after an adjective), it does not describe a person or item per se, but more like the attribute. Easiest way is to regard it as a character to transform descriptive words into adverbs.
他慢慢地吃，他很无奈地等，我们的国家队轻松地赢了金牌
Having said that, I am not wondering which of the following is correct. For me I always assumed it was a matter of which we want to emphasise on in a sentence but now I am not too sure any more...
http://www.chinesegrammar.info/particles/de-grammar-summary/
This is probably the most straightforward one.
http://carlgene.com/blog/2012/03/comprehensive-guide-to-nouns-ending-with-%E7%9A%84-de/
More details here for examples of how 的 can be used in the descriptive way.
stormborns
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
izzy806
dededos
