How to Improve Your German Vocabulary-Gender Rules

I am planning to post a series of articles on how to improve German language vocabulary skills. I hope you will enjoy the content whether you are a beginner or an advanced learner or you learned the language once and want to revise it now.

In this first hub, I would like to summarize the basic rules which help us to determine the correct article.

Can you guess the correct gender? There are some rules, which we can rely on while learning the gender of a noun. Anyone who tried once learning German knows how important it is to memorize the correct article. So I think it is a good idea to put the main rules together.

1. DIE

• The numbers are feminine: die eins, die zwei ...
• Nouns ending with -ie are feminine: die Studie, die Serie, die Akademie ...
• Nouns ending with -ei are feminine: die Konditorei, die Molkerei ...
• Nouns ending with -ion, -ik, -ur, -thek, -nz, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -ung, ät are without exceptions feminine: die Kultur, die Bibliothek, die Klinik, die Hoffnung, die Klugheit, die Sauberkeit, die Gesellshaft, die Ignoranz, die Universität
• ... and of course if the natural gender is feminine: die Frau, die Lehrerin

2. DER

• The names of the seasons are masculine: der Frühling, der Winter ....
• The names of the months are masculine: der Januar, der Februar ....
• The names of the weekdays are masculine: der Montag, der Dienstag ....
• Different times of the day are also masculine: der Vortag, der Morgen, der Abend, der Mittag. The exception is die Nacht
• The description of the rainfall is also masculine: der Schnee, der Regen ..
• The nouns which have the following endings are masculine:

-us, -ant, -ent, -är, -et, --eur, -ist, -at, -loge, -or

(der Humor, der Demokrat, der Zirkus, der Student, der Veterinär, der Prophet, der Friseur, der Philologe, der Pianist, der Praktikant)

• Of course if the natural gender is masculine: der Mann, der Bruder, der Techniker, der Politiker
• Minerals are masculine: der Saphir, der Rubin, der Diamant
• The brand names for automobiles are masculine: der BMW, der Mercedes, der Porsche; but if it is handled with a motorcycle: die BMW
• Nouns ending with -ling: der Neuling, der Schmetterling, der Häftling

3. DAS

• letters are neuter: das O, das Z
• colors are neuter: das Gelbe, das Rot ..
• nouns ending with -um, -ment, -at, -chen, -lein are neuter: das Medikament, das Stipendium, das Resultat, Täschchen
• if a noun is generated from the verb : das Kommen, das Gehen, das Spielen ....

Perhaps you may remind me if I forgot something in the above list.

A few tips to speed up the vocabulary learning process

• learn the new words in context.
• reading and listening to the news have worked on me the best. It has an important advantage if you make it a habit; because you hear and read the same expressions during the following days a few times from different sources (radio/TV/newspaper/Internet). So, you repeat the words without even noticing.
• learn the new words using a kind of mind-map. Listing the words in classical way does not work on me. Even if I repeat the entries regularly, I find this way of learning really very inefficient and also boring. Read a text, define the words you would like to memorize, put an interesting picture in the middle of the map to associate it to the concept and draw lines around it to write down your new words. I learn in this way even if I don't have time to place a picture. Just type a sentence that can remind you what you have just read or heard.
• I learn the new words when I am moving at the same time, i.e. walking around the room while saying the word loudly. The point is to create a different learning environment, so it won't be too much boring.
• Watch a DVD in German, press the pause button when you come across a German expression you would like memorize. Say the expression a few times loudly.
• If you are preparing for a German exam and need to learn many words in a short time, remember to have 5-10 minute-breaks every half an hour.

so that's it for today. Bis zum nächsten Mal!