German Nouns

A noun is a word that represents a person, place, thing, idea, or concept. In written German, nouns are always capitalized.

All nouns in German have a grammatical gender of either feminine, masculine, or neuter. It's better to think of the grammatical gender as just a category of noun, and not literally, as that can lead to errors. For example, the German word for person is feminine, even if it's a male person.

The gender of the noun affects the form of the definite article, indefinite article, and adjectives related to it. Don't worry too much about that now, it will be covered in other lessons, with lots of examples.

German nouns can form the plural in several different ways. Masculine nouns usually form the plural by adding an e. Feminine nouns usually add an n, en, or occasionally e. Neuter nouns usually add either an e or er. Sometimes a vowel changes in the word in the plural form as well. The same can also happen in English. For example the plural of man in English is men.

When learning a new German noun, it's best to learn the noun along with its plural form and the definite article (the in English) along with it.

The following table shows some examples of German nouns, along with their plural forms and corresponding definite article.

Examples

Here are some examples of how to use nouns in simple sentences.