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The
nouns A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
of the
German language German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a ...
have several properties, some unique. As in many related
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, D ...
, German nouns possess a
grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...
; the three genders are masculine, feminine, and neuter. Words for objects without obvious masculine or feminine characteristics like 'bridge' or 'rock' can be masculine or feminine. German nouns are declined (change form) depending on their
grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...
(their function in a sentence) and whether they are singular or plural. German has four cases:
nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...
,
accusative The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘ ...
,
dative In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob ...
and
genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...
. German is unusual among languages using the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
in that ''all'' nouns are capitalized (for example, "the book" is always written as ''"das Buch"'').. Other
High German languages The High German dialects (german: hochdeutsche Mundarten), or simply High German (); not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called ''High German'', comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Benrath and ...
, such as
Luxembourgish Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; Luxembourgish: ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide. As a standard form of th ...
, also capitalize both
proper Proper may refer to: Mathematics * Proper map, in topology, a property of continuous function between topological spaces, if inverse images of compact subsets are compact * Proper morphism, in algebraic geometry, an analogue of a proper map for ...
and
common Common may refer to: Places * Common, a townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland * Boston Common, a central public park in Boston, Massachusetts * Cambridge Common, common land area in Cambridge, Massachusetts * Clapham Common, originally ...
nouns. Only a handful of other languages capitalize their nouns, mainly
regional language * A regional language is a language spoken in a region of a sovereign state, whether it be a small area, a federated state or province or some wider area. Internationally, for the purposes of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Lan ...
s with orthographic conventions inspired by German, such as
Low German : : : : : (70,000) (30,000) (8,000) , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = West Germanic , fam4 = North Sea Germanic , ancestor = Old Saxon , ancestor2 = Middle ...
and Saterland Frisian. Under the influence of German, the Scandinavian languages formerly capitalized their nouns; Danish retained the habit until 1948. Noun compounds are written together with no spacing (for example, the German word for "spy satellite" is ''"Spionagesatellit"''). Plurals are normally formed by adding ''-e'', ''-en'', ''-er'' (or nothing) to the noun, and sometimes a vowel is also changed (the so-called umlaut). Moreover, recent
loanwords A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
from French and English often keep the ''-s'' plural ending.


Declension for case

N-nouns: A masculine or neuter noun with genitive singular and nominative plural ending in ''-(e)n'' is called an ''n-noun'' or ''weak noun'' (German: ). Sometimes these terms are extended to feminine nouns with genitive singular ''-'' and nominative plural ''-en''. For the four cases, nominative, accusative, dative and genitive, the main forms of declension are: For singular nouns: I: Feminine nouns usually have the same form in all four cases.
nom. , acc. , dat. , gen.
Exceptions are: * Old declensions like with genitive and dative singular (in older usage) * Words derived from Latin with nominative singular in -a and genitive singular (in older usage) * Proper nouns derived from Latin: (“Mary” in English) with genitive singular and . * Proper nouns which have two genitive forms like (“Brunhild's spear”) and (“the spear of Brunhild”). * The words which have forms like , but also . II: Personal names, all neuter and most masculine nouns have genitive case ''-(e)s'' endings: normally ''-es'' if one syllable long, ''-s'' if more. Traditionally the nouns in this group also add -e in the dative case, but this is now often ignored.
nom. , acc. , dat. , gen.
nom. , acc. , dat. , gen. . III: Masculine and neuter n-nouns take -(e)n for genitive, dative and accusative: this is used for masculine nouns ending with -e denoting people and animals, masculine nouns ending with mostly denoting people, and a few others, mostly animate nouns.
a) nom. , acc. , dat. , gen.
b) nom. , acc. , dat. , gen. . IV: A few masculine nouns take ''-(e)n'' for accusative and dative, and -(e)ns for genitive.
a) nom. , acc. , dat. , gen.
b) nom. , acc. , dat. , gen. . For plural nouns:
V: In the dative case, all nouns which do not already have an -n or -s ending add -n.
a) nom. , acc. , dat. , gen.
b) nom. , acc. , dat. , gen.


General rules of declension

* Given the nominative singular, genitive singular, and nominative plural of a noun, it is possible to determine its declension. * Note that for most feminine nouns, all singular forms are identical. This means that since n-nouns in general have all plural forms identical, all feminine n-nouns are effectively indeclinable. * The dative plural of all nouns ends in -n if such an ending does not already exist, except that of nouns that form the plural with -s, which are usually
loan word A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
s. * Most nouns do not take declensions in the accusative or singular dative cases. A class of masculine nouns, called "weak nouns," takes the ending -n or -en in all cases except the nominative. Dative forms with the ending ''-e,'' known in German as the are mostly restricted to formal usage, but widely limited to poetic style. Such forms are not commonly found in modern prose texts, except in fixed expressions (such as : "to be able") and for certain words (e.g. or ) which are, however, quite numerous; in these cases, omitting the ''-e'' would be similarly unusual. This ending is also still used semi-productively in poetry and music, mostly for the purposes of meter and rhyme. Nevertheless, in the genitive, the ending ''-es'' is used … * ''necessarily'' if the word ends with a sibilant () * ''usually'' by monosyllabic words * ''commonly'' if it ends on the letter ''d'' Only words of more syllables usually add a simple ''-s'' In colloquial usage, moreover, singular inflection of weak masculine nouns may be limited to those ending in ''-e'' Other nouns of this class are sometimes not inflected. Thus one might occasionally hear instead of the more formal .


Declension classes


Irregular declensions

* * vernacularly: ''dem Herz'' Many foreign nouns have irregular plurals, for example:


Orthography

All German nouns (except letter names) are capitalized. German is the only major language to capitalize its nouns. This was also done in the
Danish language Danish (; , ) is a North Germanic language spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark. Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the northern German region of Southern Schl ...
until 1948 and Luxembourgish and Bavarian sometimes in (New) Latin, while
Early Modern English Early Modern English or Early New English (sometimes abbreviated EModE, EMnE, or ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle E ...
showed tendencies towards noun capitalization. Capitalization is not restricted to nouns. Other words are often capitalized when they are nominalized (for instance ''das Deutsche'' ‘the German language’, a nominalized adjective).


Compounds

As in other Germanic languages, German nouns can be
compound Compound may refer to: Architecture and built environments * Compound (enclosure), a cluster of buildings having a shared purpose, usually inside a fence or wall ** Compound (fortification), a version of the above fortified with defensive struc ...
in effectively unlimited numbers, as in '' Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz'' ('Cattle Marking and Beef Labelling Supervision Duties Delegation Law', the name of an actual law passed in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1999), or ''
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft The Erste (, literally ''First-Danube-Steamboat-Shipping Company'') or DDSG was a shipping company founded in 1829 by the Austrian government for transporting passengers and cargo on the Danube. History The company built its first steamship buil ...
'' ('Danube Steamboat Shipping Company', 1829). Unlike
English compounds A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme. The English language, like many others, uses compounds frequently. English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of thei ...
, German compound nouns are always written together as a single word: "spy satellite" is thus ''Spionagesatellit'' and "mad cow disease" ''Rinderwahn''. Compound nouns take the gender of the last component noun (the
head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals ...
). In addition, there is the grammatical feature of the ''Fugen-"s"'': certain compounds introduce an "s" between the noun stems, historically marking the genitive case of the first noun (cf. Idafa), but it occurs frequently after nouns which do not actually take an "s" in their genitive cases. In many instances, the compound is acceptable both with and without the "s", but there are many cases where the "s" is mandatory and this cannot be deduced from grammatical rules, e.g. ''Hochzeitskleid'' = "wedding dress", ''Liebeslied'' = "love song", ''Abfahrtszeit'' = "time of departure", ''Arbeitsamt'' = "
employment agency An employment agency is an organization which matches employers to employees. In developed countries, there are multiple private businesses which act as employment agencies and a publicly-funded employment agency. Public employment agencies One ...
". Occurrence of the ''Fugen-"s"'' seems to be correlated to certain suffixes (of the first stem); compounds with words in ''-tum'', ''-ling'', ''-ion'', ''-tät'', ''-heit'', ''-keit'', ''-schaft'', ''-sicht'', ''-ung'' and nominalized infinitives in ''-en'' mostly do take the "s", while feminine words not ending in ''-ion'', ''-tät'', ''-heit'', ''-keit'', ''-schaft'', ''-sicht'', ''-ung'' mostly do not, but there are exceptions. Use of the "s" is mostly optional in compounds in which the second element is a participle."Der Gebrauch des Fugen-s im Überblick"
''
Spiegel Online ''Der Spiegel (online)'' is a German news website. Before the renaming in January 2020, the website's name was ''Spiegel Online'' (short ''SPON''). It was founded in 1994 as the online offshoot of the German news magazine, '' Der Spiegel'', w ...
''. To reduce length or to highlight distinctions, a prefix or suffix is sometimes mentioned only once but applies to more than one compound noun. For example: * ''Bildergalerien und -ausstellungen'' ("picture galleries and ictureexhibitions") * ''Nähe Haupt- und Busbahnhof'' ("near the main railway tationand bus station")


Issues with number

As in English, some nouns (e.g. mass nouns) only have a singular form (''singularia tantum''); other nouns only have a plural form ('' ''pluralia tantum''''): * ''Das All'', ''der Durst'', ''der Sand'' ("the Universe", "thirst", "sand") * ''Die Kosten'', ''die Ferien'' ("costs", "the holidays") Traps abound in both directions here: common mass nouns in English are not mass nouns in German, and vice versa: * ''information'' – ''Informationen'', ''die Information'' ("the piece of information"), ''die Informationen'' ("the pieces of information") * ''the police are'' (pl.) = ''die Polizei ist'' (sg.) Again as in English, some words change their meaning when changing their number: *''Geld'' ("money") – ''Gelder'' ("different sources of money") *''Wein'' ("wine") – ''die Weine'' ("different types of wine") A few words have two different plurals with distinct meanings. For example: *''Wort'' ("word") – ''Wörter'' (isolated words, as in "five words") - ''Worte'' (connected, meaningful words, as in "his last words") *''Bau'' – ''Bauten'' ("buildings") – ''Baue'' ("burrows") Some words share the singular and can only be distinguished by their gender and sometimes their plural (compare “bases” in English, which can be the plural of two distinct words, “base” and “basis”): * ''Gehalt'' – ''das Gehalt'', ''die Gehälter'' ("salary") – ''der Gehalt'', ''die Gehalte'' ("content") * ''Band'' – ''das Band'', ''die Bänder'' ("ribbon") – ''der Band'', ''die Bände'' ("volume (of a book)") * ''Teil'' – ''das Teil'', ''die Teile'' (physical "piece" e.g. from a machine) – ''der Teil'', ''die Teile'' (conceptual "part" e.g. from a speech) * ''See'' – ''der See'', ''die Seen'' ("lake") – ''die See'' ("sea", no plural form) – ''die See'', ''die Seen'' (nautical term for "(large) wave") * ''Kiefer'' – ''der Kiefer'', ''die Kiefer'' ("jawbone") – ''die Kiefer'', ''die Kiefern'' ("pine tree")


See also

*
German grammar The grammar of the German language is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages. Although some features of German grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of ...
*
German verbs German verbs may be classified as either ''weak'', with a dental consonant inflection, or ''strong'', showing a vowel gradation (ablaut). Both of these are regular systems. Most verbs of both types are regular, though various subgroups and anoma ...
*
German orthography German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of al ...
*
German pronunciation The phonology of Standard German is the standard pronunciation or accent of the German language. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof as well as the geographical variants and the influence ...


References

;Notes ;Citations


External links

{{wiktionarycat, type=German nouns, category=German nouns
German Nouns and Gender
– German grammar lesson covering nouns and gender
Nouns A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
Nouns A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
de:Deutsche Deklination#Substantive