German Masculine Nouns

German Masculine Nouns

Should I use der, die or das? This is one of the first questions that you will ask when learning German. The first thing you need to understand is that it is not related to the perceived gender of the noun it is attached to. Here are a couple of quick examples:

• der Rock – the skirt
• die Hose – the trousers

As you can see, traditionally a skirt is worn by women so your first instinct would be that it is a female item and therefore would use die. Also, trousers are associated more with men and therefore you would normally perceive the gender as male and use the der article. As you can see from the above two examples these are the opposite to what you would expect. Therefore it is important to get the idea out of your mind straight away that the articles der, die or das have anything to do with the noun itself, rather it is to do with the word.

As a general rule, you should learn the correct der, die or das article by heart with each noun as you learn them. That means when learning a word, learn the article too and test yourself on the noun including the article. If you get the article wrong then re-learn it until you get it right. However there are a few general rules you can learn to help you in those situations where you don’t know whether to use der, die or das.

The good news is: There are guidelines which will make it easier to choose between them. In this post we will be looking at the guidlines for der words 🙂

Guidlines for Masculine Nouns

1. People/Animals

All nouns which refer to a male person or animal are der words. Here is a list of the most common ones:

2. Male Occupations

Job titles which refer to a male person are der words. Here are some examples:

3. Days, Months, Seasons and Points of the Compass

There are some groups of words that are also mostly der words such as days, months, seasons, points of the compass. Here are some examples:

There are however few exceptions. For example: das Jahr – year, die Woche – week etc

4. Chemical Elements, Minerals and Stones

There are some groups of words that are also mostly der words such as chemical elements, minerals and stones. Here are some examples:

There are however few exceptions. For example: das Kalzium – Calcium, die Kohle – coal etc.

5. Certain Endings

Nouns that end in the following are always der nouns:

• ismus
• ner
• ich
• ling
• ig

Here are some examples:

The nouns that end in the following are also usually der nouns:

• er
• ist

Here are some examples: