Question

Is there any easy way of learning gender of nouns in german? Are there any rules, or i must learn it by heart?

Answer 1

Nouns ending in:

• -ant (der Konsonant)
• -ast (der Kontrast)
• -ich (der Teppich)
• -ig (der Honig)
• -ismus (der Socialismus)
• -ling (der Liebling)
• -or (der Motor)
• -us (der Rhythmus)

are masculine.

 

Nouns ending in:

• -a (die Pizza)
• -anz (die Eleganz)
• -enz (die Differenz)
• -ei (die Bücherei)
• -heit (die Krankheit)
• -keit (die Übelkeit)
• -ie (die Biologie)
• -ik (die Panik)
• -in (die Freundin)
• -schaft (die Mannschaft)
• -sion (die Explosion)
• -tion (die Station)
• -tät (die Universität)
• -ung (die Bedeutung)
• -ur (die Natur)

are feminine.

 

Nouns ending in:

• -chen (das Mädchen)
• -lein (das Büchlein)
• -ma (das Drama)
• -tel (das Viertel)
• -tum (das Eigentum)
• -um (das Album)

are neuter.

 

Compound nouns (e.g. die Bushaltestelle, der Fahrplan) generally have the gender of the last component.

 

English loan words often take the gender of the nearest German equivalent, e.g. der Airbag --> der Sack, die Box --> die Büchse, das Baby --> das Kind.

 

Memorising these will help, as will noting down the gender of any new words you look up in a dictionary. Hope that helped!! :)

 

 

 

 

SOURCE: Hammer's German Grammar and Usage, 5th Edition, Martin Durrell, 2011

Answer 2

There are some rules that could be helpful. By example, the words that end in "e" and "ung" are almost always "die" except when the word indicates something maskulin. The words that are from verbs like "Essen" are always "das". To improve your vocabulary you can start to read short books like children books in that way you can learn more vocabulary naturally than when you try to remember repeating it.