For example, "Die Mutter" would be used in the nominative (Die Mutter bringt mir einen roten Apfel), but would be "Der Mutter" in the dative (Ich bringe der Mutter einen Apfel). It is important to know the gender of the noun and the right article in the nominative, as well as being able to use the correct article for the case to avoid confusion in the sentence. For example, if you are looking at nouns in the nominative case, you would have "ein brauner Hund" in the masculine, "eine schwarze Katze" in the feminine, "ein blaues Auto" in the neuter, and "zwei graue Hasen" in the plural. This can be tricky for the native English speaker, since the articles "the" and "a" are not differentiated in English and adjectives do not decline.Īlso, while you would use "the" for singular or plural in English, in the nominative, accusative, or dative cases, articles for German nouns and the adjectives that modify the noun would change depending on the case and the form (masculine, feminine, neuter or plural). The article is also identified for plural (die). Schlafen + das Zimmer = das Schlafzimmer sprechen + die Stunde = die Sprechstunde der Hund + Hütte = die Hundehütte die Maus + die Falle = die Mausefalleįugenzeichen -(e)s ( more common ) Often found in compounds with words on -tum, -ling, -ion, -tät, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -sicht, and -ung.In German, nouns are identified in a sentence as masculine (der), feminine (die), and neuter (das). Lesen + die Brille = die Lesebrille baden + das Zimmer = das Badezimmer In fact, the word Mdchen (girl) takes the neuter article das. Mostly it serves the purpose of pronunciation.įugenzeichen -e (more rarely / often verb (-(e)n from the infinitive is dropped) + noun). While that would make a ton of sense, the assignment of articles in German is much more random. ![]() ![]() Unfortunately, there are no fixed rules for the insertion. A Fugenzeichen is a connecting sound between the two words, usually -e, -(e)s, -(e)n or -er. In about 30 per cent of the compounds, a so-called "Fugenzeichen" is inserted. Each case signifies a specific range of functions. The car+ the door = the car door the child + the bicycle = the child's bicycle. There are four cases in German: Nominative, Accusative, Dative, and Genitive. If two nouns are strung together, this happens easily with the majority of these word combinations:ĭas Auto+ die Tür = die Autotür das Kind + das Fahrrad = das Kidnerfahrrad A compound noun can be composed of:ĭas Haus + die Tür + der Schlüssel = der Haustürschlüssel In German, however, each of the definite articles has a gender. As in English, they are also placed before the noun (or their modifying adjectives). In a compound noun, the last noun determines the genus and the numerus. A definite article ( der Definitartikel) is that tiny word in English we refer to as 'the.' In German, we have three: der, die, das. Sometimes a compound noun is made up of four, five, six or more individual words (see examples). A noun compound can also consist of many different words. A compound noun consists of at least two words. In a compound noun (plural: composita), different words are combined to form a new word. The formation of new nouns happens relatively often in the German language. But, in German there are a lot more articles. In English, the definite article is the, and the indefinite articles are a and an. Important: The last word in the compound always determines the gender and the plural form of the compound noun. Articles are the word you use to describe the definiteness of a noun. Possessives (Possessivpronomen und Possessivartikel) indicate ownership and possession they allow us to express what belongs to whom. ![]() German also allows the invention of new compounds. However, the last element of the combination must be a noun. The compound words can be not only nouns, but also adjectives, adverbs, verb stems and prepositions. These consist of two or more words joined together to form a single word. The German language contains numerous compound nouns. It can be helpful to think of gender as simply categories of nouns to avoid confusion with the concept of physical gender. However, grammatical gender and physical gender do not always agree for example, the gender of the word child, das Kind, is a neuter, regardless of whether the child is male or female. When a noun refers to a person, the gender of the word usually corresponds to the physical sex of the person: der Mann (man) is masculine, die Frau (woman) is feminine. The season spring can be either der Frühling or das Frühjahr. A camera is die Kamera or der Fotoapparat. A car can be referred to as das Auto or der Wagen, depending on what the person prefers. This is because the gender of a noun is a grammatical concept that has to do with words and not with physical properties of the things they represent.įor this reason, the same object can be referred to by nouns of different genders. You can see from the nouns in the alphabet that the gender of a noun usually has little to do with the properties of the object.
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