# Gender in German: patterns / rules of thumb



## annemette94

I have been taught the most basic grammar in German, but I'm really having a hard time figuring it out, although I really try, cause I really want to learn that language. So, can someone please try to really go into details about what my questions concern? 

I have been taught about Masculinum, Femininum, Neutral and plural. 

I have three sentences here where I want to base my questions on. 

Welcher Tag ist heute? 
Welche Frau heiss Judith?
Welches Pferd ist braun? 

Im confused about how you as a beginner can know which noun that is masculine, feminine, and neutral? 
I know it is something about the endings in each word before the noun, right? (Can you please tell and explain it to me?) 
How do I know if Tag is masculinum (der), femininum (die) or neutrum (das)? 
And so on with the other two sentences. 

As another example: The table is big and the chairs are small.. 
How do I know if table in German (don't know the word yet ) is maskulinum, femininum or neutrum? 
You can't really generalize it by saying neutrum = a thing, because I know Tashe as an example is Die Tashe 
So HOW can I know, when I am a newbie right now? (Hopefully not in one year when I have my exam, which I have to, and really want to pass!) 

Help a girl in need! Thanks.


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## Kajjo

annemette94 said:


> Im confused about how you as a beginner can know which noun that is masculine, feminine, and neutral?


*You cannot.* 

You have to learn the grammatical gender along with the vocabulary: _der Tag, die Frau, das Pferd, das Mädchen
_
There are some more or less useless rules of thumb, but generally I recommend to simply learn article (gender) and noun (meaning) as unit.


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## Gernot Back

Kajjo said:


> but generally I recommend to simply learn article (gender) and noun (meaning) as unit.


What about the plurals? You have to learn them as well, not only gender and meaning!


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## annemette94

Kajjo said:


> *You cannot.*
> 
> You have to learn the grammatical gender along with the vocabulary: _der Tag, die Frau, das Pferd, das Mädchen
> _
> There are some more or less useless rules of thumb, but generally I recommend to simply learn article (gender) and noun (meaning) as unit.


Hmm.. I was sure that there were some rules that were useful in somehow  But it's just completely random if it should have die, der or das before the noun? My teacher just told me that if the noun ended on an e it most frequently is femininum. But it that true? Can we also say that about nouns ending on r is maskulinum and ending on s if it's neutrum? Or am I completely wrong? Just tell me, I really want to learn, even though it might make me look stupid =) Thanks..


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## annemette94

Gernot Back said:


> What about the plurals? You have to learn them as well, not only gender and meaning!


Actually I haven't learned anything about plurals yet - they were just quickly mentioned in Nominativ, Akkusativ, Genitiv and dativ - so that's why my question was based on the three different types of gender =) But yes, of course I need to learn them aswell. Thanks for your input though. =)


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## Demiurg

annemette94 said:


> My teacher just told me that if the noun ended on an e it most frequently is femininum. But it that true? Can we also say that about nouns ending on r is maskulinum and ending on s if it's neutrum? Or am I complete wrong?



As Kajjo said, these are (more or less useless) rules of thumb. "most frequently" doen't mean always, there are counter-examples:

der Knab*e*, der Bard*e* (masc.) - die Red*e* (fem.), but das Gered*e* (neut.)
die Scha*r*, die Ba*r* (fem.)
der Hal*s*, der Fel*s* (masc.)


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## annemette94

Demiurg said:


> As Kajjo said, these are (more or less useless) rules of thumb. "most frequently" doen't mean always, there are counter-examples:
> 
> der Knab*e*, der Bard*e* (masc.)
> die Scha*r*, die Ba*r* (fem.)
> der Hal*s*, der Fel*s* (masc.)


Okay =) I just wanted to know if they are the "rules of thumb" he was talking about. But now you told me. Thanks for your examples! I am just so eager to learn. German is an interesting language and in some ways not that different from my own language.


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## Demiurg

annemette94 said:


> Okay =) I just wanted to know if they are the "rules of thumb" he was talking about. But now you told me.



As a native speaker of German, I don't even know any rules of thumb.  I just know the gender of a lot of nouns by heart.


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## annemette94

Demiurg said:


> As a native speaker of German, I don't even know any rules of thumb.  I just know the gender of a lot of nouns by heart.


Must be lovely to know all these nouns and German in general.. Wish I was used to it. But I guess it's just about experience and a lot of training


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## Schlabberlatz

There are some obvious ones (where biological and grammatical gender are identical), "der Hengst" (male horse), "die Stute" (female horse), "der Hahn" (male chicken), "die Henne" (female chicken), "der Mann", "die Frau"; but careful about "the girl", which is neuter in German: "das Mädchen".

Apart from a few words, grammatical gender is _arbitrary_, as the others have already pointed out.


> In his fundamental books of the 1860s and 70's, language was defined as a system of arbitrary and conventional signs. This doctrine was borrowed and expanded by Ferdinand de Saussure,
> […]
> Jakobson writes, Arbitrariness is posited as the first of two basic principles for defining the nature of the verbal sign: "The bond uniting the signifier with the signified is arbitrary."
> William Dwight Whitney - Wikipedia


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## bearded

annemette94 said:


> in some ways not that different from my own language.


Hello
I  read that Scandinavian languages possess a neuter gender and a common (masculine/feminine) gender. In Danish are there rules by which you can determine which gender nouns belong to, like you wished there were in German...?


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## annemette94

bearded said:


> Hello
> I  read that Scandinavian languages posses a neuter gender and a common (masculine/feminine) gender. In Danish are there rules by which you can determine which gender nouns belong to, like you wished there were in German...?


 Well we have something like neutral and a common gender. Danish is even more complicated I guess, cause yes there are some rules about it, but there's just as many exceptions. We just know it, when we are born and raised in Denmark. But for foreigners I will say that I really understand how hard it is, because nothing really makes that much sense. That's why I hoped it wasn't like that in German. But unfortunately people now have told me that it is 
A chair -> En stol
A table -> Et bord


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## annemette94

Schlabberlatz said:


> There are some obvious ones (where biological and grammatical gender are identical), "der Hengst" (male horse), "die Stute" (female horse), "der Hahn" (male chicken), "die Henne" (female chicken), "der Mann", "die Frau"; but careful about "the girl", which is neuter in German: "das Mädchen".
> 
> Apart from a few words, grammatical gender is _arbitrary_, as the others have already pointed out.


Yeah, and those nouns actually make sense. So can you say that in general the nouns that can be separated in both female and male form like a "female horse" and "male horse" fit? It's hard to explain, but is it only "das Mädchen" that is different when it comes to if there is both a male and a female of the noun? If you understand what I'm saying haha.. It's so hard to explain...


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## bearded

'Mädchen' is neuter because it has the diminutive ending -chen (all diminutive nouns in -chen are neuter:  der Tisch/das Tischchen..).
And most nouns with the -ung ending are feminine (die Besatzung, die Versuchung...) with a few exceptions like der Ursprung.
Apparently there are a few thumb rules after all...


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## JClaudeK

bearded said:


> (all diminutive nouns in -chen are neuter: der Tisch/das Tischchen..).
> And most nouns with the -ung ending are feminine
> there are a few thumb rules after all...



But I would recommend all the same:
when learning new nouns, repeat (several times, aloud) the noun and the plural: 
f.i. der Tisch/ die Tische; der Tisch/ die Tische; der Tisch/ die Tische; der Tisch/ die Tische; ....
das Haus/ die Häuser; das Haus/ die Häuser; das Haus/ die Häuser; das Haus/ die Häuser; .....


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## berndf

bearded said:


> with a few exceptions like der Ursprung.
> Apparently there are a few thumb rules after all...


That is not really an exception. Ursprung does not contain the suffix -ung, the morpheme structur is _Ur-sprung_ and not _Urspr-ung_. Of course, this means you have to understand the morphological structure of a word when you learn it but it is a good idea learn that in any case, not just to determine gender. In this case it is easy because a stem _Urspr- _would very obviously be phonologically completely impossible.


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## JClaudeK

Here some more "thumb rules": Gender - Lingolia German


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## annemette94

JClaudeK said:


> Here some more "thumb rules": Gender - Lingolia German


Thank you so much, it seems to be a decent website where I can find the most doubtful German words. I will for sure look up on that site and put it as a bookmark. Again, I am eager to learn and pass my exam :-D


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## bearded

berndf said:


> the morpheme structur is _Ur-sprung_ and not _Urspr-ung_


You are right, berndf. So it's not a real exception.


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## Schlabberlatz

annemette94 said:


> It's hard to explain, but is it only "das Mädchen" that is different when it comes to if there is both a male and a female of the noun?


I don’t know how many exceptions there are. The only other one that’s coming to my mind right now is "das Männchen" (male animal) and "das Weibchen" (female animal), which also have, as you will have noticed, the diminutive ending "-chen". "Bei Hühnern heißt das Männchen ›Hahn‹ und das Weibchen ›Henne‹." "das Huhn" = "chicken", plural: "die Hühner"; "heißen" = "to be called".


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## Kajjo

_das Weib
das Mädchen
das Fräulein_

_Er war die Lichtgestalt / eine Koryphäe...._


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## Gernot Back

Kajjo said:


> Er war die Lichtgestalt / eine Koryphäe....


Es kann aber auch sein, dass ER _keine so große Leuchte_ ist ...​


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## Pflaenzchen

annemette94 said:


> I have three sentences here where I want to base my questions on.
> 
> Welcher Tag ist heute?
> Welche Frau heiss Judith?
> Welches Pferd ist braun?
> 
> Im confused about how you as a beginner can know which noun that is masculine, feminine, and neutral?
> I know it is something about the endings in each word before the noun, right? (Can you please tell and explain it to me?)
> How do I know if Tag is masculinum (der), femininum (die) or neutrum (das)?
> And so on with the other two sentences.


Welch*er* Tag ist heute? -> *der* Tag
Welch*e* Frau heißt Judith? -> *die* Frau
Welch*es* Pferd ist braun? -> *das* Pferd

The endings of those words that mean 'which' in English - welche/welcher/welches - correspond to the gender of the noun that is being asked about  

So, having a complete sentence, you CAN detect the noun's gender by looking at the endings of those words which correspond to them.


If/ when you have to write your own sentences, THAN you start having that problem of just having to know ;-)


--------------------------------
that page about gender in the German language is nice for Germans, too :-D
I only wonder why they didn't include those mostly female nouns ending on -e, that were mentioned above. Maybe too many exceptions in their case - but I think, the female ones make up a great majority of those still, I'd include them.


( I LIKE them :-D : 

die Sonne, die Wonne, die Tonne, die Kolonne, die Tanne, die (Bade)wanne, die Sahne (but der Ahne), die Mine, die Miene, die Biene, die Wespe, die Lesbe, die Espe, die Esche, die Wäsche, die Kirsche, die Kirche, die Treppe, die Meise, die Ameise, die Schwalbe, die Halbe *g*

(sun, joy, ton, colonn?? - I'll have to look that up, it's a train of marching people or trucks, tanks, cars in a long row one behind the other or a group of people teamed together in military or like in "Lager" s :-(( , Tanne is a tree, not a fir?, (bath)tub, cream, ((the forefather is male), mine, facial expression, bee, wasp, lesbian, a tree from the Populus-family, another tree -ash??, laundry, cherry, church, stairs, a (family of) little bird(s) whose English name I don't know, ant, a bird that builds nests inside cowsheds, one of those silly Bavarian drink measurements (halfliter) )

- and many more and I like them! :-D )


I hope the memorizing will not only be frustrating, but some fun, too. I wish you well!


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## popotla

Kajjo said:


> *You cannot.*
> 
> You have to learn the grammatical gender along with the vocabulary: _der Tag, die Frau, das Pferd, das Mädchen
> _
> There are some more or less useless rules of thumb, but generally I recommend to simply learn article (gender) and noun (meaning) as unit.



As a beginner, I found that the rule that "nouns ending in _-heit, -keit_ or _-ung_ are feminine" to be extremely helpful. That _Urspung_ isn't feminine, as mentioned above, isn't a problem: clearly enough, it's "a different kind of ending".


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## Sepia

annemette94 said:


> Hmm.. I was sure that there were some rules that were useful in somehow  But it's just completely random if it should have die, der or das before the noun? My teacher just told me that if the noun ended on an e it most frequently is femininum. But it that true? Can we also say that about nouns ending on r is maskulinum and ending on s if it's neutrum? Or am I completely wrong? Just tell me, I really want to learn, even though it might make me look stupid =) Thanks..




The "E - femininum" rule may be true in some 30-40% cases. So in other words it slightly better than choosing randomly. The "R"-rule - alone it is pretty useless, but if you add a few more criteria like "ending with "er" as a suffix to a verb stem, you can be pretty sure that it is masculinum. In "Messer" I don't see verb and it is "das Messser". If you pay attention to such "sub-rules" or comibined criteria you can determine the Gender of German words in some 70-80% cases. The rest you'll have to memorise.


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## Sepia

popotla said:


> As a beginner, I found that the rule that "nouns ending in _-heit, -keit_ or _-ung_ are feminine" to be extremely helpful. That _Urspung_ isn't feminine, as mentioned above, isn't a problem: clearly enough, it's "a different kind of ending".



"Ursprung" isn't a word with the suffix "ung". It is the prefix "ur" and the word "Sprung". The rule -eit, -heit, -keit -schaft, -ion  and -ung is only valid when we are dealing with suffixes. However, when they are suffixes it is a 100% rule - no exception.


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## anahiseri

annemette94, I can understand your disappointment when realizing you have to learn the gender for each noun and there are very few rules. Of course this means you have to make a little extra effort when memorizing vocabulary. But once you get used to it you'll see it's not so difficult. Each language has aspects which are more difficult to learn and others which are easier. 
In English, you don't have gender, but you have to learn the correct pronunciation together with the spelling of each word; I think that's worse than the gender in German.
In French, you have only two genders, and no declensions, but then the spelling is rather complicated with the many silent letters and the different accents.
In Spanish, two genders also.
In Chinese, no genders, no plural/singular distinction, no declensions, no tenses or other change in verb forms ..... wonderful, isn't it? 
Well, wait until you realize you have to memorize a kind of intricate little picture for each word. . .a little picture which has hardly anything to do with the meaning, and which you have to draw with utmost precision. ......


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## Ptolemy2.18

It might help you to know that there are no differences between the genders in the plural.
Die Männer, die Frauen, die Mädchen (Nom)
Der Männer, der Frauen, der Mädchen (Gen)
Den Männern, den Frauen, den Mädchen (Dat)
Die Männer, die Frauen, die Mädchen (Akk)

Otherwise there are rules for the grammatical gender of more complex (not in the linguistic way) words, i.e. compound word and the already mentioned diminutives (compounds take the gender of their last element and diminutives are always neutral). But that there is a neutral, masculine and feminine form for each _concept_ is only true for animals.


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## ayuda?

Oh yeah, gender and plurals of German nouns—the horror, the horror! 
Then come the adjectives...and you’re in a state of toxic cultural shock☢. 

Just to add to the reference by JClaudeK
●Try this general search on the subject:
*Google>Search> determining the gender of nouns in german* [See the many results]
*A few results fron that search: *
German For Dummies Cheat Sheet - dummies 
[Forget the "Dummies"  part; they put out some of the best books on all kinds of subjects.]
Forum | Duolingo

There _are_ actually some general rules that non-natives can use to help remember things.
Every one of the different sites might be helpful in adding something extra to determine the gender of nouns.

Like anahiseri said, every language has its sticking points: in English, it’s spelling and pronunciation...no rhyme or reason to it sometimes either. And you will find that a lot of us  get a little lazy with the spelling and rely on Word for a quick fix.

Here’s another GREAT site for checking gender, adjective endings, and complete sentences you might have questions about:
● A fantastic _new_ tool from *reverso.net*—quite amazing, and free.
It not just for English-German translations, but also for other languages, such as German-Spanish, etc. [After, use your mouse’s pointer over the phrase to see the sentence/phrase in its original, full context.] Considering the difficulty of case, gender, plurals in context, I’ve never found anything as accurate as that!!! Everyone should check it out.
*Example:* And the big brown bear → Und *der* große braune *Bär*


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