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Nouns in German


In German each and every noun has a grammatical gender.
We have to distinguish masculine, feminine and neuter German nouns.
As this is very different from English, we strongly advise you:

Please:
Whenever you learn a new German noun, look up its gender and learn both by heart.
The easiest way to do this, is to combine the noun with its definite article.

Example:
burglar – der Einbrecher (masculine)
friendship – die Freundschaft (feminine)
parliament – das Parlament (neuter)

We want to provide you with some rules of thumb that will help you to find out about the gender of German nouns:

Rules for telling grammatical gender in German nouns:
masculine nouns feminine nouns neuter nouns
grammatical gender = natural gender
ending in:
-er
-en
-m
-ig
-ling
ending in:
-e
-ei -keit
-heit
-schaft
-ung
ending in:
-ment
-nis
-tum
-um
loanwords ending in:
-or
-ismus
-ist
loanwords ending in:
-ät
-ik
-ion
-ie
-ur
-enz
diminutive forms ending in:
-chen
-lein