German Articles

If you're trying to learn German Articles you will find some useful resources including a course about Definite and Indefinite Articles... to help you with your German grammar. Try to concentrate on the lesson and notice the pattern that occurs each time the word changes its place. Also don't forget to check the rest of our other lessons listed on Learn German. Enjoy the rest of the lesson!

German Articles

Articles are words often used before nouns. They determine their grammatical case, gender and singular/plural.

In German nouns are often accompanied by an article. These can either be definite or indefinite, the number and the gender.

 

In German you have three different genders:

-          Masculine (m)

-          Feminine (f)

-          Neuter (n)

 

and two numbers:

-          Singular

-          Plural

 

as well as four cases:

-          Nominative (*I am referring to this one in this lesson.)

-          Genitive

-          Dative

-          Akkusative

 

For more details on the cases, see lesson “cases”.

The matter of grammatical gender in German is quite different from other languages.
The definition of the gender of nouns does not entirely depend on its sex.

For example:

 

the woman = die Frau (f)
but
the girl = das Mädchen (n)

 

Both are of feminine gender, but still the articles are different.

In German we have 3 different words for “ocean” or “sea” and each of them has its own gender: der Ozean (m), das Meer (f), die See (n).

 

It is not always the best choice to simply transfer the gender from one language into another. It can often go wrong, as this example shows:

 

Spanish: el sol (m) and la luna (f)
German: die Sonne (f) and der Mond (m)

The genders are the opposite way around! The sun is masculine in Spanish, whereas it’s female in German and the Spanish moon is female, whereas the German one is masculine. In English they are all referred to with “the”. The genders… Enough to drive you crazy!

 

You have no choice as to memorise the German nouns directly with their article and to learn them by heart.

Note that all nouns in German are written with a capital letter. This rule also includes proper names, cities, countries, rivers, mountains, animals, etc…

 

Article	Feminine	Masculine	Neuter
Definite article	die Frau (the woman)	der Mann (the man)	das Kind (the child)
Plural	die Frauen (the women)	die Männer (the men)	die Kinder (the children)
Indefinite article	eine Frau	ein Mann	ein Kind
Plural	Frauen	Männer	Kinder

 

The definite article in plural is always “die”, no matter the gender.
(I am referring to the case “Nominative” here. See more on this subject in lessons “Cases”.)

The indefinite article in singular for the masculine and neuter gender is always “ein”.
There is no plural existing for the indefinite articles.

Here are some more examples:

Article	Feminine	Masculine	Neutral
Definite article	die Katze (the cat)	der Hund (the dog)	das Tier (the animal)
Plural	die Katzen (the cats)	die Hunde (the dogs)	die Tiere (the animals)
Indefinite article	eine Katze	ein Hund	ein Tier
Plural	Katzen	Hunde	Tiere

Learning the German Articles is very important because its structure is used in every day conversation. The more you practice the subject, the closer you get to mastering the German language. But first we need to know what the role of Articles is in the structure of the grammar in German.

German articles are words that combine with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Generally articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun. Examples are "the, a, and an". Here are some examples:

English Articles	German Articles
articles	Artikel
the	der, die, das
a	einer, eine, ein
one	eins
some	einige
few	wenige
the book	das Buch
the books	die Bücher
a book	ein Buch
one book	ein Buch
some books	einige Bücher
few books	ein paar Bücher

As you can see from the example above, the structure of the Articles in German has a logical pattern. Locate the Articles above and see how it works with the rest of the sentence in German.

List of Articles in German

Below is a list of vocabulary where you can use the Definite and Indefinite Articles in German. Try to practice but also memorizing this table will help you add very useful and important words to your German vocabulary.

English Vocabulary	German Vocabulary
Food	Lebensmittel
almonds	Mandeln
bread	Brot
breakfast	Frühstück
butter	Butter
candy	Süßigkeiten
cheese	Käse
chicken	Huhn
cumin	Kreuzkümmel
dessert	Dessert
dinner	Abendessen
fish	Fisch
fruit	Obst
ice cream	Eis, Eiskrem
lamb	Lamm
lemon	Zitrone
lunch	Mittagessen
meal	Mahlzeit
meat	Fleisch
oven	Backofen
pepper	Pfeffer
plants	Pflanzen
pork	Schweinefleisch
salad	Salat
salt	Salz
sandwich	Sandwich, Butterbrot
sausage	Wurst
soup	Suppe
sugar	Zucker
supper	Abendessen
turkey	Pute
apple	Apfel
banana	Banane
oranges	Orangen
peaches	Pfirsiche
peanut	Erdnuss
pears	Birnen
pineapple	Ananas
grapes	Trauben
strawberries	Erdbeeren
vegetables	Gemüse
carrot	Karotte
corn	Mais
cucumber	Gurke
garlic	Knoblauch
lettuce	Blattsalat
olives	Oliven
onions	Zwiebeln
peppers	Paprika
potatoes	Kartoffeln
pumpkin	Kürbis
beans	Bohnen
tomatoes	Tomaten

Definite and Indefinite Articles have a very important role in German, therefore they need very special attention. Once you're done with German Articles, you might want to check the rest of our German lessons here: Learn German. Don't forget to bookmark this page.