Gender

All German nouns have a and they fall into one of four categories:

masculine
feminine
neuter
plural

Gender symbols of a woman, a man and a symbol which is half man and half woman.

The gender of any noun in a German dictionary will usually be indicated by the letters m (masculine), f (feminine), n or nt (neuter) or pl (plural) next to the word.

English used to have different genders for nouns and a few examples are still used today. Some non-human nouns, like ships or countries, are still occasionally referred to as 'she'.

Indefinite and definite articles

One way of showing the gender of a German noun is to look at which is used in front of it.

In the following sentence, the indefinite article ‘a’ refers to any pen available. It's not definite or specific which pen is being referred to.

Hast du einen Kuli? – Do you have a pen?

But in this next example, the definite article ‘the’ refers to a specific or definite pen.

Hast du den Kuli? – Do you have the pen?

So the definite article refers to ‘the’ and the indefinite article refers to ‘a’. They are depending on which is being used.

Definite article

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
Nominative	der	die	das	die
Accusative	den	die	das	die
Genitive	des	der	des	der
Dative	dem	der	dem	den

Nominative
Masculine	der
Feminine	die
Neuter	das
Plural	die

Accusative
Masculine	den
Feminine	die
Neuter	das
Plural	die

Genitive
Masculine	des
Feminine	der
Neuter	des
Plural	der

Dative
Masculine	dem
Feminine	der
Neuter	dem
Plural	den

Indefinite article

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural*
Nominative	ein	eine	ein	keine
Accusative	einen	eine	ein	keine
Genitive	eines	einer	eines	keiner
Dative	einem	einer	einem	keinen

Nominative
Masculine	ein
Feminine	eine
Neuter	ein
Plural*	keine

Accusative
Masculine	einen
Feminine	eine
Neuter	ein
Plural*	keine

Genitive
Masculine	eines
Feminine	einer
Neuter	eines
Plural*	keiner

Dative
Masculine	einem
Feminine	einer
Neuter	einem
Plural*	keinen

*It is not possible to have a plural ‘a’ as ‘a’ is singular. The forms keine/keiner/keinen are used here to mean ‘not any’.

Did you know?

German, like all languages, borrows words from others, especially from English. Most, but not all, nouns of foreign origin are neuter – das Knowhow or das Know-How, das Auto, das Handy.

However, the word 'app' has caused a few problems. As it's short for the existing German word die Applikation, some people think it should be feminine.

Others think of it as an English import – 'application' – so feel it should be neuter, because it's a borrowed word. Even the main German dictionary producers are undecided and note that it can be either die App or das App.

In view of the fact that the ending -tion usually denotes a feminine noun, it's probably wiser to stick to die App.

Kurz und knapp, es heißt die App – in short, it is dieApp.

A smartphone surrounded by icons of various apps.

NounsGender