How To Know If A Word Is Masculine Or Feminine In German
So the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. The best place to start is by looking at the end of a word.
The three gender markers that mean the singular in German are der masculine die feminine and das neuter.
How to know if a word is masculine or feminine in german. Frequently you can tell the gender by the ending. However names of countries ending in -a are neuter. They do not change in the plural form eg das Mädchen the girl die Mädchen the girls they usually add an.
Masculine German nouns take the definite article der the and indefinite ein aan. Unlike English every noun in German is assigned one of three genders. Das Amerika das Guinea das Uganda das Jamajka.
Every noun has a gender and there is no sense or system in the distribution. Nouns that are made of the stem of a verb by removing the ending -en are usually masculine. To figure out whether a word is masculine look for the following word endings.
-heit feminine die Freiheit -chen neuter das Maedchen. Words that use the articles le or un are going to be masculine and words that use the articles la or une are feminine. All nouns in German are either masculine feminine or neuter.
Das Messer die Gabel der Loeffel. You see if the word starts with der masculine die feminine or das neuter. Masculine feminine or neuter.
They always make a noun neuter regardless of what gender the original word was. German goes them one better and adds a third gender. Most world languages have nouns that are either masculine or feminine.
In German a young lady has no sex while a turnip has. Some of the genders are obvious such as the word for. -a names of countries Most words ending in -a are female names and as such are of course feminine.
For masculine nouns der means the - der. Every language has words that are nouns. I would make up your own list of endings for each gender and organize it so it makes sense to you.
Some you have to just memorize. Feb 4 2018 - Many languages have masculine and feminine words but the German language has neuter words as well. - In this video Cari speaks about the German articles der die und das.
Here the sheer prominence of the gender system in German actually helps. To point out the gender of nouns you use different gender markers. The masculine definite article the is der the feminine is die and the neuter form is das.
To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. The plural form of the definite article is die. You could get some books from the library for free.
When you learn that the word for dog is Hund learn that its a masculine noun - der Hund. English has only one gender marker for the definite article of all nouns namely the. In diesem Video spricht Cari über die deutschen Artikel der die und das.
There is no other way. German speakers have had many years to learn whether wagen car is der or die or das. For example when asked to describe a key a word that is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish the German speakers were more likely to use words like hard heavy jagged metal serrated and useful whereas Spanish speakers were more likely to say golden intricate little lovely shiny and tiny.
There are no patterns that work always you just need to memorize. By far the most effective method is to get down with the kids Little Germans learn their mother tongue pick up gender simply by relying on context. They always hear the word behaving according to its gender.
-chen and -lein are used in German to form diminutives which generally dont exist in English. Schlafen to sleep der Schlaf sleep laufen to run der Lauf run kämpfen to fight der Kampf fight aussteigen to exit der Ausstieg exit. -er -el -ling -ich -ig -ner -ismus -or -us -eich -ant Following this rule youll be correct around 80 of the time.
Learn German noun gender in context. Sometimes assigning gender to a word might seem arbitrary but there are a few tricks that will help you tell if a word is masculine or feminine.
