 |
|
|
|
This page contains some audio files. You can press this button here to test your sound settings. Read our help pages for more information in case our sound feature does not work for you.
|
The plural form of German nouns
We already told you in our last lesson a little bit about the plural in German.
You even studied some food related vocabularies and exclusively learned their plural forms instead of
memorizing the singular form (e.g. 'die Erdbeeren' = the strawberries).
The plural in German is something difficult, since there are very few rules and guidelines to follow
if you want to form the plural of a noun. On the contrary, in English, as you know,
it's very easy to do so: Simply add an 's' to the end of the noun and you get the plural form.
But wait! Is it that easy?
Look at the following table, listing some examples of the plural in German. Most of the
words in the table were already covered by the previous lessons. By looking at the singular
and plural forms, can you see at least some regularities and make rules out
of them?
| Singular | Plural | English |
 | die Banane | die Bananen | the banana |
| die Erdbeere | die Erdbeeren | the strawberry |
| die Decke | die Decken | the ceiling |
| die Gitarre | die Gitarren | the guitar |
| die Jacke | die Jacken | the jacket |
| die Hose | die Hosen | the pants |
| die Wohnung | die Wohnungen | the apartment/flat |
| der Student | die Studenten | the student |
| der Lehrer | die Lehrer | the teacher |
| der Vater | die Väter | the father |
| der Mann | die Männer | the man |
| der Supermarkt | die Supermärkte | the supermarket |
| der Tisch | die Tische | the table |
| der Löffel | die Löffel | the spoon |
| der Zoo | die Zoos | the zoo |
| der Anorak | die Anoraks | the anorak |
| das Haus | die Häuser | the house |
| das Jahr | die Jahre | the year |
| das Tier | die Tiere | the animal |
| das Auto | die Autos | the car |
| das Radio | die Radios | the radio |
The first rule is that the definite article for plural nouns is always 'die'. There is no exception to this rule.
Also, like in English, there is no plural indefinite article in German
(1 car = 'a car'; 2 cars = 'two cars' => no article).
| RULE: The definite article for all plural nouns in German is 'die'. There is no exception to this rule. Like in English, there is no indefinite plural article in German. Possessive pronouns in the plural are the same as the singular/feminine forms (e.g. meine, deine, seine, ihre, etc..). |
When, we look at the endings, we find that most of the plural forms in German somehow
have an 'e' in their ending. According to the above table, most plural endings will be
'er', 'en', 'el' and 'e'.
| GUIDELINE: Plural forms of nouns usually have an 'e' in their ending. Possible endings for plural nouns are 'er', 'en', 'el', and 'e'. |
An exception to the above guideline are words that have a foreign origin (e.g. 'Auto', 'Zoo', 'Restaurant')
or nouns that end in a vowel (e.g. 'Sofa', 'Kamera', 'Foto' ...).
Those nouns simply add an 's' to their singular to form the plural: 'Autos', 'Zoos' or 'Fotos'.
Another useful rule is the following:
| RULE: Feminine nouns that end in 'e', simply add an 'n' to form the plural. Examples: 'Gitarre' and 'Jacke'. |
The following few guidelines might also be helpful in determining the plural forms of certain nouns in the
future:
| GUIDELINE: Some nouns change their stem by transforming an 'a', 'o' or 'u' in the stem to their respective umlauts 'ä', 'ö', or 'ü'. Examples: das Haus, der Mann. |
| GUIDELINE: Many nouns with only one syllable simply add an 'e' to form the plural (e.g. das Jahr, das Tier, der Tisch). However, there are many exceptions to this guideline. |
| GUIDELINE: Nouns that end in 'el' or 'er' in the singular often do not change in the plural or only change their stem to an umlaut (see guideline above). Examples: der Löffel, der Vater, der Lehrer |
All together, the plural is a tough thing to learn. It is so difficult, because - like the genders of nouns -
there are so few rules and guidelines to follow and those rules that do exist usually have a lot of exceptions.
Let's now look ahead and practice the plural through some exercises. The only save way of properly
memorizing plural forms is through repetition and exercising.
|
You are currently
not logged in. |
login or register
|
|
| Comments and Suggestions |
| Let us know what you think about our website or report a mistake here. |
|
| Courses Overview |
 Course 1
 Course 2
Course 3
|
|
| Quick Help |  | Click to listen to the audio-files. |
|
|
| Spread the word |
Tell your friends about our new site.
Click here to notify them.
|
|
| Color Scheme |
|
|
|
|
|
Lesson 7
