Nouns & Cases Flashcards
German Nouns
All nouns have a gender in German, either masculine, feminine or neuter. There really isn’t a lot of logic to which nouns are which gender, so you must memorize the gender of each noun.
Male persons or animals, the seasons, months, and days are all masculine, as are nouns ending in
-ant, -ast, -ich, -ig, -ismus, -ling, -or and -us.
Female persons or animals, and numerals are all feminine, as are nouns ending in
-a, -anz, -ei, -enz, -heit, -ie, -ik, -in, -keit, -schaft, -sion, -sis, -tät, -tion, -ung and -ur.
Young persons or animals, metals, chemical elements, letters of the alphabet, hotels, restaurants, cinemas, continents, countries and provinces are all neuter, as are nouns that end in
-chen, -icht, -il, -it, -lein, -ma, -ment, -tel, -tum, and -um. Nouns referring to things that end in -al, -an, -ar, -ät, -ent, -ett, -ier, -iv, -o and -on, as well as most words with the prefix ge- and most nouns ending in -nis and -sal are also neuter.
All nouns in German are ___________ in writing.
capitalized
All nouns (as well as pronouns and adjectives) have a case depending on what function they serve in the sentence.
Although these cases may make learning new words difficult, they actually help with word order because the position of words in a sentence is not as fixed in German as it is in English.
Nominative
subject of the sentence (The girl is reading.)
Accusative
direct objects (We see the mountain. I bought a gift.)
Dative
indirect objects (We talk to the guide. I gave my mom a gift.)
Genitive
indicates possession or relationship (The book of the girl. The dog’s tail.)
The nouns you look up in a dictionary will be in the __________ case.
nominative