Nouns

Duitse zelfstandige naamwoorden hebben één van de drie geslachten. Jammer is dit woord gelslacht in het Nederlands een beetje verwarrend, denk meer aan geslacht of categorie.

The three categories are known as masculine, feminine, and neuter. Each one has a matching definite article – der, die, and das.

der Garten	der Winter	der Tee
de tuin	de winter	de thee
die Schule	die Temperatur	die Tomate
de school	de temperatuur	de tomaat
das Haus	das Pfund	das Jahr
het huis	de pond	het jaar

The gender of the word also determines the ending of the adjectives that describe it. We’ll go into that in more detail later on as it involves a bit of memorization.

German nouns have singular and plural forms. The plural is often regularly formed by adding -n or -en, but there are enough irregular plurals that the plural of a noun is usually listed in dictionaries along with the definition.

The plural definite article is always die.

die Sprache	die Sprachen
de taal	de talen
das Magazin	die Magazine
het tijdschrift	de tijdschriften
der Mann	die Männer
de man	de mannen

In all writing that’s even a little bit formal, all German nouns are capitalized. Online writing like social media or text chats usually doesn’t keep the same standards.

As a general rule, German noun gender is unpredictable.

However, there are two neat tricks that you can use to make an educated guess at the gender of the noun.

First off, just under half of all German nouns are feminine. If in total doubt, guess feminine. But two-thirds of monosyllabic nouns are masculine!

Second, many nouns have similar endings, kind of like -ist or -tion in English. At the end of this guide, you can find a table of common noun endings with predictable genders.