B.
Home.
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German genders are strange
Nouns in German are either
feminine, masculine or neuter. For example,
Frau (woman) is feminine,
Mann (man) is masculine, and
Kind (child) is neuter.
While some nouns (Frau, Mann, …) have
natural gender like in English (a woman is female, a man is male),
most nouns have grammatical gender (depends on word ending, or seemingly random).
For example,
Mädchen (girl) is neuter, because all words ending in
-chen are neuter.
Wasser (water) is neuter, but
Cola is feminine, and
Saft (juice) is masculine.
It is important to
learn every noun along with its gender because parts of German sentences change depending on the gender of their nouns.
For now, just remember that the
indefinite article (a/an)
ein is used for masculine and neuter nouns, and
eine is used for feminine nouns. Stay with us to find out how "cases" will later modify these.
| gender |
indefinite article |
| masculine |
ein Mann |
| neuter |
ein Mädchen |
| feminine |
eine Frau |
