German nouns

German nouns are generally capitalised (for example 'the book' is always "das Buch"). Noun compounds are written together (for example, "spy satellite" is "Spionagesatellit" in German). As in many related Indo-European languages, nouns in German have a grammatical gender: masculine, feminine, or neuter, even words for objects without (obvious) masculine or feminine characteristics like 'bridge' or 'rock'. They are also declined (change form) depending on their grammatical case (their function in a sentence) and whether they are singular or plural. German has four cases, nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.

German plurals are normally formed by adding -e, -en, -er or nothing to the noun, sometimes also a vowel is changed. Recent loanwords from French and English often keep the -s plural ending.

• der Mann (sg.) - die Männer (pl.) ("the man" - "the men")

Declension for case

N-nouns: A masculine or neuter noun with genitive singular and nominative plural in -e(n) is called a n-noun or weak noun (German: schwaches Substantiv). Sometimes these terms are extended to feminine nouns with genitive singular - and nominative plural -en.

For the four cases, nominative, accusative, dative and genitive, the main forms of declension are:

For singular nouns:

I: Feminine nouns usually have the same form in all four cases.
die Frau, die Frau, der Frau, der Frau
Exceptions are:

• Old declensions like Frau/Fraw with genitive and dative singular der Frauen/Frawen (in older usage)
• Words derived from Latin with nominative singular in -a and genitive singular -ae/-ä (in older usage)
• Proper nouns derived from Latin: Maria (Mary in English) with genitive singular Mariä, Mariens, Marias and (der) Maria.
• Proper nouns which have two genitive forms like Brunhilds Speer (Brunhild's spear) and der Speer der Brunhild (the spear of Brunhild).
• The words Mama, Mami, Mutter, Mutti, Oma, Omi which have forms like die Tasche der Mama, but also Mamas Tasche

II: Personal names, all neuter and most masculine nouns have genitive case -(e)s endings: normally -es if one syllable long, -s if more. This is related to using 's to show possession in English, e.g. 'The boy's book'. Traditionally the nouns in this group also add -e in the dative case, but this is now often ignored.
der Mann, den Mann, dem Mann(e), des Mann(e)s
das Kind, das Kind, dem Kind(e), des Kind(e)s

III: Masculine and neuter n-nouns take -(e)n for genitive, dative and accusative: this is used for masculine nouns ending with -e and a few others, mostly animate nouns.
a) der Drache, den Drachen, dem Drachen, des Drachen
b) der Prinz, den Prinzen, dem Prinzen, des Prinzen

IV: A few masculine nouns take -(e)n for accusative and dative, and -(e)ns for genitive.
a) der Buchstabe, den Buchstaben, dem Buchstaben, des Buchstabens
b) der Glaube, den Glauben, dem Glauben, des Glaubens

For plural nouns:
V: In the dative case, all nouns which do not already have an -n or -s ending add -n.
a) die Kinder, die Kinder, den Kindern, der Kinder
b) die Frauen, die Frauen, den Frauen, der Frauen

General rules of declension

• Given the nominative singular, genitive singular, and nominative plural of a noun, it is possible to determine its declension.
• Note that most feminine nouns, all singular forms are identical.
• The dative plural of all nouns ends in -n if such an ending does not already exist, except that of nouns that form the plural with -s, which are usually loan words.
• Most nouns do not take declensions in the accusative or dative cases. A small class of mostly masculine nouns called "weak nouns" takes the ending -n or -en in all cases except the nominative.

Dative forms with the ending -e, known in German as the Dativ-e (dem Gotte, dem Manne) are mostly restricted to formal usage, but widely limited to poetic style. Such forms are not commonly found in modern texts, except in fixed expressions (such as im Stande sein: "to be able") and for some certain words (e.g. (dem) Hause, Wege or Tode) which are, however, quite numerous; in these cases, omitting the -e would be similarly unusual.

Nevertheless, in the genitive, the ending -es is used …

• necessarily if the word ends with a sibilant (des Hauses, des Stoßes, des Schusses)
• usually by monosyllabic words (des Gottes, des Mannes)
• commonly if it ends on the letter „d“

Only words of more syllables usually add a simple -s (des Königs).

In colloquial usage, moreover, singular inflection of weak masculine nouns may be limited to those ending in -e (der Name – dem Namen). Other nouns of this class are sometimes not inflected. Thus one might occasionally hear dem Spatz, dem Idiot instead of the formally correct dem Spatzen, dem Idioten.

Declension classes

Irregular declensions

• * vernacularly: dem Herz

Many foreign nouns have irregular plurals, for example:

Orthography

German nouns are capitalized. German is the only major language to capitalize its nouns. This was also done in the Danish language until 1948 and sometimes in (New) Latin, while Early Modern English showed tendencies towards noun capitalization.

Capitalization is not restricted to nouns. Other words are often capitalized when they are nominalized (substantivated; for instance das Deutsche ‘the German language’, a nominalized or substantivated adjective). German orthography has a number of capitalization rules and non-capitalization rules.

In compound nouns (such as Apfelbaum), only the beginning is capitalized (Apfel) and not the second word (Baum) or any following words:

Farbfernsehgerät — color television set

Compounds

As in other Germanic languages, German nouns can be compound in effectively unlimited numbers, as in Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (‘cattle identification and beef labeling supervision task transference law’, the name of an actual law passed in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1999), or Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft (‘Danube Steamboat Shipping Company’, 1829).

The difference from English compounds is that German compounds are always written together as a single word: "spy satellite" equals "Spionagesatellit" and "mad cow syndrome" equals "Rinderwahnsinn".

In addition, there is the grammatical feature of the Fugen-"s": certain compounds introduce an "s" between the noun stems, historically marking the genitive case of the first noun (c.f. Idafa), but it occurs frequently after nouns which do not actually take an "s" in their genitive cases.

In many instances, the compound is acceptable both with and without the "s", but there are many cases where the "s" is mandatory and this cannot be deduced from grammatical rules, e.g. Hochzeitskleid = "wedding dress", Liebeslied = "love song", Abfahrtszeit = "time of departure", Arbeitsamt = "employment agency".

Occurrence of the Fugen-"s" seems to be correlated to certain suffixes (of the first stem); words in "tum, -ling, -ion, -tät, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -sicht, -ung" and nominalized infinitives in "-en" mostly do take the "s", while feminine words in "-ion, -tät, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -sicht, -ung" mostly do not, but there are exceptions. Use of the "s" is mostly optional in compounds in which the second element is a participle.^[1]

To reduce length, a suffix may only be mentioned one time in a sentence, even if it applies to more than one compound noun. For example:

• Nähe Haupt- und Busbahnhof (near the main railway [station] and bus station)

Common false friends

As in English, some nouns (e.g. mass nouns) only have a singular form (singularia tantum); other nouns only have a plural form (pluralia tantum):

• Das All, der Durst, der Sand ("the Universe", "thirst", "sand")
• Die Kosten, die Ferien ("costs", "the holidays")

Traps abound in both directions here: common mass nouns in English are not mass nouns in German, and vice versa:

• information — Informationen, die Information ("the piece of information"), die Informationen ("the pieces of information")
• the police are (pl.) = die Polizei ist (sg.)

Again as in English, some words change their meaning when changing their number:

• Geld ("money") - Gelder ("different sources of money")
• Wein ("wine") - die Weine ("different types of wine")

A few words have two different plurals with distinct meanings. For example:

• Wort ("word") - Wörter (isolated words, as in "five words") - Worte (connected, meaningful words, as in "his last words")
• Band - Bande ("bonds") - Bänder ("ribbons")
• Bau - Bauten ("buildings") - Baue ("burrows")

Some words share the singular and can only be distinguished by their gender and sometimes their plural:

• Gehalt - das Gehalt, die Gehälter ("salary") - der Gehalt, die Gehalte ("content")
• Band - das Band, die Bänder ("ribbon") - der Band, die Bände ("bibliographic volume")
• Teil - das Teil, die Teile (physical "piece" e.g. from a machine) - der Teil, die Teile (conceptual "part" e.g. from a speech)
• See - der See, die Seen ("lake") - die See ("sea", no plural form) - die See, die Seen (nautical term for "(large) wave")
• Kiefer - der Kiefer, die Kiefer ("jawbone") - die Kiefer, die Kiefern ("pine tree")

See also

• German grammar

References

External links

For a list of words relating to German nouns, see the German nouns category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• German Nouns and Gender – German grammar lesson covering nouns and gender