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Tag Archives: feminine nouns

German Suffixes And Word Genders Posted by on Mar 31, 2021

suffix

Guten Tag! Today we’re revisiting the subject of German word genders (articles), and how you can recognise if German words are masculine (der), feminine (die) or neuter (das), by looking at their suffixes. Learning the genders of every single German noun is no small task – especially when there is no hard and fast rule…

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Is The German Language Sexist? Posted by on Aug 29, 2018

German has three genders for its nouns: der (masculine), die (feminine) and das (neuter). A common point of confusion amongst German language learners is why each noun has its assigned gender – especially when there is no pattern to it and/or its gender doesn’t appear to make sense. For example, a table in German is…

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Weibliche Substantive im Deutschen erkennen: Teil 4 – Detecting German feminine nouns: part 4 Posted by on Jan 20, 2012

After we have hashed and rehashed feminine nouns in the last three posts, we finally come to an end of this topic. Remember that all nouns are feminine that refer to: – female human beings (Mutter-mother; Frau-woman, wife; Tochter-daughter; the only exception is “Mädchen”-girl, which is neuter because of the syllable –chen) – female occupations…

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Weibliche Substantive im Deutschen erkennen: Teil 3 – Detecting German feminine nouns: part 3 Posted by on Jan 18, 2012

Why are some nouns in German masculine, others feminine, and still others neuter? I am probably not the only one who is asking this question. And to make things worse: there isn’t any logical explanation for that. I pondered over that question quite a long time to give you, at least, a more or less…

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Weibliche Substantive im Deutschen erkennen: Teil 2 – Detecting German feminine nouns: part 2 Posted by on Jan 16, 2012

Last time is was said that all those nouns are feminine, which refer to female humans (die Mutter-mother; die Tante-aunt), female animals (die Stute-mare; die Sau-sow), and female occupations (die Ärztin-phyisician; die Friseurin-haidresser). Let’s have a look now, which nouns are also commonly feminine in German.   a) Some names of animal species die Auster…

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Weibliche Substantive im Deutschen erkennen: Teil 1 – Detecting German feminine nouns: part 1 Posted by on Jan 12, 2012

Learning German nouns seems to be quite annoying for foreign learners of German because of the three grammatical genders that German nouns can have. In my previous four posts I thoroughly discussed masculine nouns, and in this post I would like to begin with feminine nouns   a) Nouns that denote female humans, female animals…

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German Feminine Nouns Continued Posted by on May 15, 2009

This is part 2 of the feminine noun post. Sometimes, loan words that come from English are used in German. Take a look at some of these foreign word endings: -isse : die Hornisse (hornet) -ive : die Initiative (initiative) -ette : die Serviette (napkin) -ade : die Parade (parade) Now here are some groupings…

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