Lektion 5 Nouns

Nouns are words that describe beings, places and things e. g. die Frau – the woman, der Bahnhof – the train station, das Wetter – the weather. German nouns can be used with masculine (der), feminine (die) or neuter (das) articles and they are always written with a capital letter. German noun endings change to match the case they are in.

You will learn to use German nouns and articles in their singular and plural forms as well as in the nominative, accusative, dative and genitive cases. At the end of each page, there are exercises so you can practice using nouns and articles in German.

Gender: der, die, das

The grammatical gender shows if a noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter. In German, it’s often impossible to tell this just from looking at the noun, but there are some clues that can help you determine the gender.

Example:

der Schmetterling

die Umgebung

das Märchen

Articles

In German, we generally use nouns together with their articles. The article tells us the gender, number, and case of the noun. There are indefinite articles (ein, eine) and definite articles (der, die, das).

Example:

ein/der Mann

eine/die Frau

ein/das Kind

Plural

The plural in German can take the endings n/en, e, r/er, s, or no ending at all. Here we explain when each plural ending should be used.

Example:

die Universität – die Universitäten

die Oma – die Omas

Declension

In German, nouns have to be declined. Here, we explain when to use each case and what you need to pay attention to when declining a noun.

Example: 

der Mann, des Mannes, dem Mann, den Mann (Nominativ, Genetiv, Dativ, Akkusativ)

die Frau, der Frau, der Frau, die Frau (Nominativ, Genetiv, Dativ, Akkusativ)

In English, we use word order to show who is doing what to whom. But german is way more flexible.

Nominative
(Subject of the sentence)

masculine
der

neutral
das

feminine
die

plural
die

Accusative
(Direct object of the sentence)

masculine
den

neutral
das

feminine
die

plural
die