Barsby's Grammar Bash

Nouns and gender

(To go straight to exercises click here).

Nouns

Nouns are naming words. There are three types of noun:

common nouns
proper nouns
abstract nouns

Common nouns are everyday objects, eg: chair, table, school.

Proper nouns are the names of places or people, eg: Frau Schmidt, London, Germany.

Abstract nouns are the names of things that cannot be touched or seen, eg: time, religion, idea etc.

In English only proper nouns have a capital letter. In German EVERY noun starts with a CAPITAL LETTER.

In many languages nouns have a gender. In German the gender is dictated by the spelling of the noun rather than by the meaning.

eg: although the German word for woman is die Frau and therefore feminine, the word for girl is das Mädchen and is therefore neuter.

Some tips on gender: (this is NOT exhaustive)

Words that end in : -heit; -keit; -ung are always feminine
Words that end in : -chen are always neuter

Articles

In English there are only three articles: the, a and an. 'The' is known as the 'definite article' and 'a' and 'an' are the 'indefinite articles'. In German there are sixteen of each article! To know which article to use you have to know the gender and case of the noun you are using.

Definite Articles

	masc	fem	neut	plur
nom	der	die	das	die
acc	den	die	das	die
gen	des	der	des	der
dat	dem	der	dem	den

Indefinite Articles

	masc	fem	neut	plur
nom	ein	eine	ein	keine
acc	einen	eine	ein	keine
gen	eines	einer	eines	keiner
dat	einem	einer	einem	keinen

Click on the links below to go to exercises on nouns and gender.

Click on the following links for powerpoint presentations on items of vocabulary. To return to this page when you have finished simply click the back arrow on the top left hand of the screen.

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