The painful german articles
Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book.
- Mark Twain: The Awful German Language
As dreadful as it sounds, there is no magic rule to guess the gender of a noun. As you will need it in every sentence (more informations in next week’s course), you must learn them.
These few rules help me infer them though:
Feminine: -ei, -heit, -ik, -keit, -schaft, -tät, -tion, -ung
Masculine: -ig, -smus, -ling, -or
Neutral: -chen, -le, -ma, -ment, -tum, -um
For words that don’t match these patterns and that aren’t alreadly gender-bent (der Tänzer, die Tänzerin), here’s my trick:
- words with latin / french roots are often neutral (das Baguette, das Trottoir, das Jargon, das Dessert),
- while english words tend to be masculine (der Computer, der Browser, der Job)
Exceptions: die Band, die Couch, das Sofa, …
And another trick from last week:
- nouns derived from irregular verbs are often masculine:
der Lauf, der Schlaf, der Vertrieb, der Aufstand, der Flug, der Ruf, der Gedanke - but the german equivalent to the english infinitive+ing (e.g. the acting), a noun built from the infinitive form of a verb, is always neutral:
das Laufen (running), das Schlafen (er ist am Schlafen: he is sleeping)
The rest has to be learnt by heart: there aren’t any further tricks known to me!
Tell me which words are the most tricky for you to learn or if you know of any other method to guess a noun’s gender!
