1. Declension for case
     General rules of declension    Declension classes    Irregular declensions  

2. Orthography

3. Compounds

4. Issues with number

5. See also

6. References

7. External links

  {{refimprove|date=September 2018}}  {{Original research|discuss=Original research|date=September 2018}}

German nouns have a grammatical gender, as in many related Indo-European languages. They can be masculine, feminine, or neuter, even words for objects without (obvious) masculine or feminine characteristics like 'bridge' or 'rock'. They are also declined (change form) depending on their grammatical case (their function in a sentence) and whether they are singular or plural. German has four cases, nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.

German, along with other High German languages, such as Luxembourgish, is unique among major languages using the Latin alphabet in that all nouns, both proper and common, are capitalized (for example, "the book" is always written as "das Buch"). Only a handful of other languages generally capitalize their nouns, mainly regional languages inspired by German such as Saterland Frisian. Noun compounds are written together (for example, the German word for "spy satellite" is "Spionagesatellit").

German plurals are normally formed by adding -e, -en, -er or nothing to the noun, sometimes also a vowel is changed. Recent loanwords from French and English often keep the -s plural ending.

Declension for case

N-nouns: A masculine or neuter noun with genitive singular and nominative plural in -(e)n is called a n-noun or weak noun (German: {{lang|de|schwaches Substantiv}}). Sometimes these terms are extended to feminine nouns with genitive singular - and nominative plural -en.

For the four cases, nominative, accusative, dative and genitive, the main forms of declension are:

For singular nouns:

nom. {{lang|de|die Frau}}, acc. {{lang|de|die Frau}}, dat. {{lang|de|der Frau}}, gen. {{lang|de|der Frau}}

Exceptions are:

• Old declensions like {{lang|de|Frau/Fraw}} with genitive and dative singular {{lang|de|der Frauen/Frawen}} (in older usage)
• Words derived from Latin with nominative singular in -a and genitive singular {{lang|de|-ae/-ä}} (in older usage)
• Proper nouns derived from Latin: {{lang|de|Maria}} (“Mary” in English) with genitive singular {{lang|de|Mariä, Mariens, Marias}} and {{lang|de|(der) Maria}}.
• Proper nouns which have two genitive forms like {{lang|de|Brunhilds Speer}} (“Brunhild's spear”) and {{lang|de|der Speer der Brunhild}} (“the spear of Brunhild”).
• The words {{lang|de|Mama, Mami, Mutter, Mutti, Oma, Omi}} which have forms like {{lang|de|die Tasche der Mama}}, but also {{lang|de|Mamas Tasche}}.

nom. {{lang|de|der Mann}}, acc. {{lang|de|den Mann}}, dat. {{lang|de|dem Mann(e)}}, gen. {{lang|de|des Mann(e)s}}

nom. {{lang|de|das Kind}}, acc. {{lang|de|das Kind}}, dat. {{lang|de|dem Kind(e)}}, gen. {{lang|de|des Kind(e)s}}.

b) nom. {{lang|de|der Prinz}}, acc. {{lang|de|den Prinzen}}, dat. {{lang|de|dem Prinzen}}, gen. {{lang|de|des Prinzen}}.

b) nom. {{lang|de|der Glaube}}, acc. {{lang|de|den Glauben}}, dat. {{lang|de|dem Glauben}}, gen. {{lang|de|des Glaubens}}.

For plural nouns:

b) nom. {{lang|de|die Frauen}}, acc. {{lang|de|die Frauen}}, dat. {{lang|de|den Frauen}}, gen. {{lang|de|der Frauen.}}

General rules of declension

• Given the nominative singular, genitive singular, and nominative plural of a noun, it is possible to determine its declension.
• Note that for most feminine nouns, all singular forms are identical.
• The dative plural of all nouns ends in -n if such an ending does not already exist, except that of nouns that form the plural with -s, which are usually loan words.
• Most nouns do not take declensions in the accusative or dative cases. A small class of mostly masculine nouns called "weak nouns" takes the ending -n or -en in all cases except the nominative.

Dative forms with the ending -e, known in German as the {{lang|de|Dativ-e (dem Gotte, dem Manne)}} are mostly restricted to formal usage, but widely limited to poetic style. Such forms are not commonly found in modern texts, except in fixed expressions (such as {{lang|de|im Stande sein}}: "to be able") and for certain words (e.g. {{lang|de|(dem) Hause, Wege}} or {{lang|de|Tode}}) which are, however, quite numerous; in these cases, omitting the -e would be similarly unusual.

Nevertheless, in the genitive, the ending -es is used …

• necessarily if the word ends with a sibilant ({{lang|de|des Hauses, des Stoßes, des Schusses}})
• usually by monosyllabic words {{lang|de|(des Gottes, des Mannes)}}
• commonly if it ends on the letter d

Only words of more syllables usually add a simple -s {{lang|de|(des Königs).}}

In colloquial usage, moreover, singular inflection of weak masculine nouns may be limited to those ending in -e {{lang|de|(der Name – dem Namen).}} Other nouns of this class are sometimes not inflected. Thus one might occasionally hear {{lang|de|dem Spatz, dem Idiot}} instead of the formally correct {{lang|de|dem Spatzen, dem Idioten}}.

Declension classes

Irregular declensions

• vernacularly: dem Herz

Many foreign nouns have irregular plurals, for example:

Orthography

All German nouns are capitalized.^[1] German is the only major language to capitalize its nouns. This was also done in the Danish language until 1948 and sometimes in (New) Latin, while Early Modern English showed tendencies towards noun capitalization.{{cn|date=September 2018}}{{efn|Capitalization of some English nouns was still in use in the 18th century, as can be seen for example in the American Declaration of Independence.}}

Capitalization is not restricted to nouns. Other words are often capitalized when they are nominalized (for instance das Deutsche ‘the German language’, a nominalized adjective).

Compounds

As in other Germanic languages, German nouns can be compound in effectively unlimited numbers,

as in Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (‘Cattle Marking and Beef Labelling Supervision Duties Delegation Law’, the name of an actual law passed in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1999), or Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft (‘Danube Steamboat Shipping Company’, 1829).

The difference from English compounds is that German compounds are always written together as a single word: "spy satellite" equals "Spionagesatellit" and "mad cow syndrome" equals "Rinderwahnsinn".

In addition, there is the grammatical feature of the Fugen-"s": certain compounds introduce an "s" between the noun stems, historically marking the genitive case of the first noun (cf. Idafa), but it occurs frequently after nouns which do not actually take an "s" in their genitive cases.

In many instances, the compound is acceptable both with and without the "s", but there are many cases where the "s" is mandatory and this cannot be deduced from grammatical rules, e.g. Hochzeitskleid = "wedding dress", Liebeslied = "love song", Abfahrtszeit = "time of departure", Arbeitsamt = "employment agency".

Occurrence of the Fugen-"s" seems to be correlated to certain suffixes (of the first stem); compounds with words in "-tum, -ling, -ion, -tät, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -sicht, -ung" and nominalized infinitives in "-en" mostly do take the "s", while feminine words not ending in "-ion, -tät, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -sicht, -ung" mostly do not, but there are exceptions. Use of the "s" is mostly optional in compounds in which the second element is a participle.^[2]

To reduce length or to highlight distinctions, a prefix or suffix is sometimes mentioned only once but applies to more than one compound noun. For example:

• Bildergalerien und -ausstellungen (picture galleries and [picture] exhibitions)
• Nähe Haupt- und Busbahnhof (near the main railway [station] and bus station)

Issues with number

As in English, some nouns (e.g. mass nouns) only have a singular form (singularia tantum); other nouns only have a plural form (pluralia tantum):

• Das All, der Durst, der Sand ("the Universe", "thirst", "sand")
• Die Kosten, die Ferien ("costs", "the holidays")

Traps abound in both directions here: common mass nouns in English

are not mass nouns in German, and vice versa:

• information — Informationen, die Information ("the piece of information"), die Informationen ("the pieces of information")
• the police are (pl.) = die Polizei ist (sg.)

Again as in English, some words change their meaning when changing their number:

• Geld ("money") - Gelder ("different sources of money")
• Wein ("wine") - die Weine ("different types of wine")

A few words have two different plurals with distinct meanings. For example:

• Wort ("word") - Wörter (isolated words, as in "five words") - Worte (connected, meaningful words, as in "his last words")
• (das) Band - Bande ("bonds") - Bänder ("ribbons")
• Bau - Bauten ("buildings") - Baue ("burrows")

Some words share the singular and can only be distinguished by their gender and sometimes their plural:

• Gehalt - das Gehalt, die Gehälter ("salary") - der Gehalt, die Gehalte ("content")
• Band - das Band, die Bänder ("ribbon") - der Band, die Bände ("bibliographic volume")
• Teil - das Teil, die Teile (physical "piece" e.g. from a machine) - der Teil, die Teile (conceptual "part" e.g. from a speech)
• See - der See, die Seen ("lake") - die See ("sea", no plural form) - die See, die Seen (nautical term for "(large) wave")
• Kiefer - der Kiefer, die Kiefer ("jawbone") - die Kiefer, die Kiefern ("pine tree")

See also

• German grammar

References

Notes

Citations

External links

• German Nouns and Gender – German grammar lesson covering nouns and gender

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