Gender of Nouns and Definite Articles

What are definite and indefinite articles and some of the vocabulary words used to describe household items?

Gender of Nouns

A noun is a word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, abstract idea or action, like the words "pool, book, beauty, liberty."

Mein Vater fährt mit dem Bus in die Stadt. (My father is going to the city by bus).

In this sentence Vater, Bus, and Stadt are nouns.

In the German language every noun has a gender, based on specific grammatical features of the noun. The gender of a noun is indicated by the definite article used:

der (masculine)
die (feminine)
das (neuter)

These all mean the.

In English, nouns have no grammatical gender, unlike in German. All nouns in English are considered natural in their gender, where an object-referencing noun (table, chair, etc.) uses the pronoun it, while a male-referencing noun (man, boy, etc.) uses the pronoun he and a female-referencing noun (woman, girl, etc.) uses the pronoun she.

Definite Articles Examples

definite article examples
der = masculine	die = feminine	das = neuter
der Mann/the man	die Frau/the woman	das Kind/the child
der Vater/the father	die Mutter/the mother	das Buch/the book
der Tisch/the table	die Lampe/the lamp	das Haus/the house

Look at the examples above. Observe that the gender of a noun normally has little to do with the specific qualities of the object it refers to. That's because noun gender is a grammatical concept that has to do with words rather than any physical attribute of the things they represent. The words table, lamp, and house all have a grammatical gender indicated by the definite articles der (masculine), die (feminine) and das (neuter):

der Tisch (masculine)
die Lampe (feminine)
das Haus (neuter)

Faustregal (rule of thumb)

Even though German gender rules are based on grammar, there are still some natural gender rules that will apply. The following is a guide to some of the general ideas of gender in German:

Most nouns referring to males are der-nouns (der Sohn - the son)
Most nouns referring to females are die-nouns (die Tochter - the daughter)
Most nouns referring to young beings are das-nouns (das Kind - the child)

The key to finding the grammatical gender of German nouns is generally in the noun ending.

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