Remembering whether German nouns are masculine, feminine or neuter is difficult for beginners. Unlike in many other gendered languages, there aren’t tell-tale signs like uniform endings. Here’s a method that makes memorising each noun’s gender much easier:
Step 1: imagine three places in your head, one that is a masculine noun, one feminine, and the last, neuter. An example of this is der Wald (forest), die Inseln (island) and das Dorf (village), but they can be any places.
Step 2: for any new word that you learn, imagine this object or concept inside the place that matches its gender. For example, you can imagine a train station (der Bahnhof) in a forest, a school (die Schule) on an island and a house (das Haus) in a village.
Step 3: create stories between different items to further embed the connections. For example, you could imagine a man (der Mann) sitting at a table (der Tisch) on a train (der Zug) in a train station (der Bahnhof), eating a dish of coq au vin (der Wein und der Hahn) with a spoon (der Löffel).
5 extra tips
When you learn a new word, try to learn other words in the same category, and sort them to see patterns and outliers.
For example, many furniture items are masculine: der Tisch, der Stuhl, der Fernseher, der Sessel, der Schrank, but with a number of exceptions: das Bett, das Sofa, das Bucherregal, die Kommode, die Lampe and a few more.
Compound nouns always take the gender of the second noun:
der Hof –> der Bahnhof
die Schule –> die Spracheschule
das Zimmer –> das Schlafzimmer
When you come across similar looking and/or sounding words, learn their genders in tandem to ensure you can differentiate between them, to help listeners to understand what you’re saying, even if your pronunciation is a little off:
die Schule = school
der Schüler = school boy
Many verbs can be converted into nouns by capitalising the word; they are always neuter:
schwimmen = to swim –> das Schwimmen = swimming
essen = to eat –> das Essen = food
sehen = to see –> das Sehen = sight
As you progress, starting noticing word endings; start small with these four:
Diminutives are always neuter: these are words that end in -chen in standard German; this explain why “girl” is neuter, not feminine: das Mädchen
-heit and -keit are always feminine: die Freiheit (freedom), die Neuheit (novelty), die Höflichkeit (politeness)
-ion is always feminine: die Produktion, die Funktion, die Nation, die Konversation
-ung is almost always feminine: die Zeitung (newspaper), die Empfehlung (recommendation)
Memory palaces
This is what your memory palaces could look like:
All the male animals hang out in the forest, the other animals are on the island, except for the baby animals, who are in the village (with the young people too: das Junge, das Mädchen, das Kind, das Baby).
Most drinks are in the forest (der Wein, der Kaffee, der Tee) with the exception of das bier and die heiße Schokolade.
Naturally, this doesn’t work so well for abstract concepts, but there’s nothing stopping you from imagining a problem in the village (das Problem), a disaster on the island (die Katastrophe) and a coincidence in the forest (der Zufall).
Final thoughts
Memorising the gender of German nouns is a never-ending process, so it’s worth creating a method that works for you from the offset.
Download my free worksheet PDF and start adding nouns to each category as you learn them.
As you progress, start noticing and making use of more patterns, whether more word endings, or word categories, which you can read about in full on German with Laura.
If this post has been helpful to you, please like and share it! If you’ve got another memorisation technique for German noun genders, I’d love to hear from you 🌞
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