German Nouns

In this lesson, we'll explore German nouns. But first, let’s quickly review: what is a noun? A noun is a word that identifies a person, place, thing, or concept.

Here are some examples of nouns:

In English, we capitalize the first word of a sentence, names, and proper nouns.

In German, however, all nouns - common and proper - are capitalized. That means every thing counts. Take a look at this sentence and try to guess which words are nouns.

Click on the words to reveal the answers:

You may have noticed that all German nouns in the tables include either der, die, or das. These are the three German equivalents of the word the, each identifying a different grammatical gender:

• die for feminine nouns
• der for masculine nouns
• das for neuter nouns

Exercise: Which article goes with each noun? Try guessing before clicking on the blurred words to reveal the answer.

Hopefully, this exercise wasn't too hard since we told you the gender. But how can you tell which article to use with a noun, otherwise?

Unfortunately, there’s no one simple rule for determining the gender of German nouns. While some noun genders seem logical:

...others aren't:

If "man" is masculine and "woman" is feminine, why is "girl" (das Mädchen) neuter? And why is "table" masculine and "lamp" feminine? There are some helpful rules, such as:

• All months of the year are masculine
• Nouns ending in -ung are feminine
• Most nouns ending in -e are feminine

However, we would suggest tackling them once you are at a more advanced stage, as many of them come with exceptions.

Now, let’s look at how to make nouns plural in German!

In English, we usually add an s to make a word plural. In German, it’s a bit different. Plurals can be formed in various ways:

• By attaching an e, en, n, er or s to the end of the word
• By replacing a vowel with an ä, ö or ü
• Some nouns use both an umlaut and a word ending to form the plural

Here are some examples of singular and plural nouns with transformed endings. Notice that all plural nouns use the article die.

Now, let’s look at some examples where the vowel changes into an umlaut to form the plural:

Well done 🎉!

We’ve covered the basics of German nouns: capitalizing them, assigning them one of three articles (der, die, das), and forming plurals. Don’t worry too much about memorizing the rules for gender and plurals right now. What’s important is understanding that:

• German nouns have one of three articles, depending on gender
• German nouns have many different plural forms

Whenever you're ready, move on to the next lesson on German verbs, to continue your learning!