7. The Definite Article & the 3 Genders of German Nouns

7.  The Definite Article & the 3 Genders of German Nouns

The native born English speaker suddenly gets an unsuspected surprise when learning that German has THREE basic words for the (known as the definite article). For an English speaker, this seems a little bit unnecessary, especially if you have previously seen that some languages don't even have ONE word for the as is the case in Latin.

German groups its nouns into GENDER, these being FEMININE, MASCULINE and NEUTER. Sounds OK, a little German logic I hear you saying, but here is where the wrestling starts. The word for 'the' with a feminine noun is 'die', so the lady  is  die Dame; a masculine noun has 'der', so the word for the man is der Mann and a neuter noun has 'das' so the word for the book is das Buch. Primarily the system works along gender lines. Here are some examples below ....

FEMININE: die Dame, Frau (woman), Tante (aunty), Mutter (mother), Oma (nan), Kusine (cousin)
MASCULINE: der Mann (man), Onkel (uncle), Vater (father), Opa (pop), Kusin (male cousin)
NEUTER: das Bett (bed), Haus (house), Sofa (sofa), Papier (paper), Licht (light), Auto (car)

All well and good, until .... suddenly we find that .... objects can be masculine, feminine or neuter, and people can even sometimes be neuter, e.g. ( or in German z.B. = zum Beispiel) ....

Food:      das Brot =  bread,  die Suppe  =  soup,  der Reis =  rice
Drinks:   der Wein =  the wine ,  die Limonade = lemonade (soft drink, soda),  das Bier = beer
Fruits:     das Obst = the fruit,   der Apfel  =  the apple,  and  die Banane = the banana
People:   das Kind = the child,   das Mädchen =  the girl,  das Baby  =  the baby

Well, when you learn a new German word, you just have to learn it with the right definite article!