In most cases, however, if a language’s historical forms made use of gendered words, it likely retained this feature up to the present day, largely for the sake of logical sentence structures that speakers already understood.<\/p>\n
That’s because grammatical genders are more about classifying nouns into categories <\/strong>rather than assigning them a physical gender. Fireplaces aren’t truly “feminine”\u2014it’s just a way of structuring the language.<\/p>\n For the most part, there’s no reason a certain noun receives a certain gender. A chair (Ein Stuhl)<\/em> is masculine in German, feminine in Spanish and neuter in Polish. The gender of a noun is simply a grammatical rule.<\/strong><\/p>\n This grammatical rule is critical to the German language, however, as various grammatical structures<\/a> rely on the gender of nouns\u2014such as adjective endings, articles, pronouns and plural forms, to name a few.<\/p>\n Are you ready for a crash course on German genders? Here we go!<\/p>\n As mentioned previously, German grammar<\/a> has three genders, and each noun is one of those three. The first place you’ll likely come across German genders is in the three different words for “the” in German<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n Der \u2014 <\/em>the (masculine)<\/p>\n Die <\/em>\u2014 the (feminine)<\/p>\n Das <\/em>\u2014 the (neuter)<\/p>\n These are the articles you use for singular nouns. If you’re talking about multiple things in plural, you can forget the gender and just use the plural article die<\/em><\/a>,<\/strong> which looks the same as the feminine, but isn’t!\u00a0<\/p>\n Same goes for German indefinite articles, which you can read about in this post<\/a>.<\/p>\n Knowing the correct gender of a noun is important when adding in adjectives before the noun.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is when you need to add an ending to the adjective, and that ending depends on a number of things: the kind of determiner used before the noun, the case the noun is in and (you guessed it!) the gender of the noun.<\/p>\n For example, the gender of the noun is particularly apparent in adjectives when there is no definite article before the noun, like “a small apple” or simply “small apple”.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since there’s nothing making the gender and case of the noun clear, the adjective ends up doing the job. So if we say “the green apple”, we have a definite article, in which case the adjective can relax and just add on an\u00a0-e:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Der gr\u00fcne<\/strong><\/span> Apfel <\/em><\/p>\n But if we want to say “a<\/strong> green apple”, the word\u00a0ein\u00a0<\/em>doesn’t make it clear what the noun and case of the word\u00a0Apfel<\/em> is, so the adjective needs to jump in. In this situation, we’ll add -er <\/em><\/strong>to the adjective\u00a0gr\u00fcn<\/em> to reflect that the noun\u00a0der<\/strong> Apfel<\/em> is masculine and in the nominative case:<\/p>\n Ein gr\u00fcner<\/strong><\/span> Apfel\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Take a look at a couple other examples:\u00a0<\/p>\n Ein kleiner<\/strong><\/span> Tisch \u2014 <\/em>a small table (masculine)<\/p>\n Eine kleine<\/strong><\/span> Blume <\/em>\u2014 a small flower (feminine) Ein kleines<\/strong><\/span> Sofa <\/em>\u2014 a small sofa (neuter)<\/p>\n Notice how each ending is mimicking the definite article: der<\/em> and er<\/em>,\u00a0die<\/em> and -e<\/em>,\u00a0das\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0-es<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n If that sounds convoluted, it’s because it is. Adjective endings in German are notoriously confusing!<\/p>\n While the above logic is a helpful starting point, there’s a fair bit more to cover. Lucky for you, we’ve got you covered with our very own article on the subject with everything you need to know<\/a>!<\/p>\n We often learn the word for “it” in German as\u00a0es<\/em>, but there’s actually more to it than that, where the gender of a noun becomes very important.<\/p>\n In English, when you’re not talking about a person, we refer to everything as “it”. (The chair?\u00a0It\u00a0<\/strong>is over there.)\u00a0<\/p>\n But in German, you need to use the correct pronoun<\/a><\/strong> depending on the gender of the noun.\u00a0<\/p>\n Let’s look at an example. D<\/em>er Apfel<\/em> is a masculine noun, so if you’re referring back to it, you need to use the masculine pronoun er<\/em>, which we otherwise know as the word for “he”:<\/p>\n Der Apfel<\/strong> ist rot, aber er<\/strong><\/span> ist noch nicht reif. <\/em> (The apple is red, but\u00a0it\u00a0<\/strong>is\u00a0not yet ripe.)<\/p>\n The same goes for any other noun. Want to refer back to die Torte <\/em>(the cake)? You need to use the feminine pronoun sie:<\/em><\/p>\n Ich habe eine Torte<\/strong> gebacken und sie<\/strong><\/span> war sehr lecker! <\/em> (I baked a cake and\u00a0it\u00a0<\/strong>was very tasty!)\u00a0<\/p>\n The same also goes for German possessive pronouns<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now, we’ll finish with an example that usually throws learners off. Das M\u00e4dchen\u00a0<\/em>(the girl) is a neuter noun, defying expectation. This means if you’re referring back to “the girl”, it is grammatically more correct to use es<\/em>, not sie:<\/em><\/p>\n Ein M\u00e4dchen<\/strong> sa\u00df am Fenster. Es<\/strong><\/span> hatte lange, blonde Haare. <\/em> (A girl was sitting by the window. She<\/strong> had long, blonde hair.)\u00a0<\/p>\n It’s worth noting that in colloquial speech, or examples where the pronoun is further away from the original mention of the word das M\u00e4dchen, <\/em>you will see sie <\/em>used to refer to “her”.\u00a0<\/p>\n You can look at different sentence structures and understand better how genders work in German with FluentU.<\/p>\n FluentU<\/strong> takes authentic videos\u2014like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks\u2014and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.<\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Check out the website or download the iOS app<\/a> or Android app.<\/a><\/p>\r\nA Basic Overview of German Genders<\/h2>\n
Gender and Adjectives<\/h3>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\nGender and Pronouns<\/h3>\n
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