Why is girl (Mädchen) neutral in German? On gender rules in the language
When students begin to learn about the articles in German, they quickly discover not only that there are three genders in the language- masculine, feminine, neutral- they also stumble upon the fact that girl in German is das Mädchen, so neutral. While this may sound counterintuitive, once they understand that the ending -chen refers to our diminutive- so in German girl is, in fact, a little girl- and nouns that end on -chen are always neuter, they usually accept it and move on.
So once you have mastered the logic of the cases, it is important to learn the most common gender rules.
Here they are:
People and devices ending on -er are always masculine
e.g. der Manager, der Lehrer, Drucker, der Computer
People ending on -in are always feminine
e.g. die Managerin, die Lehrerin
Nouns that end on -ung, -heit, -keit are always feminine
e.g. die Lösung, die Übung, die Gesundheit
Nouns that come from Latin or Ancient Greek ending on -tät, -ion, -ie, -ik are always feminine
e.g. die Universität, die Biologie, die Mathematik
Most nouns ending on -e are feminine
e.g. die Lampe, die Kaffeemachine
common exceptions are: der Name, der Junge, der Kollege, der Kunde
Many modern international words are neuter (das)
e.g. das Hotel, das Restaurant, das Problem
Nouns ending on -um and -chen are always neuter
e.g. das Studium, das Mädchen
Capitalised verbs, i.e. verbs turned into nouns, are always neuter
e.g. das Essen
I hope this helps. Contact me with questions and comments. As soon as you have given the cases some practice, you might want to learn German pronouns as they build on the cases. You will find my explanation here:
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/pronouns-in-german
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/when-do-you-use-mir-and-mich-in-german
Other grammar topics you might want to learn or review can be found here:
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/separable-verbs-in-german-when-do-they-split
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/learn-the-perfekt-tense-in-german
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/adjective-ending-rules-in-german
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/prepositions-in-german-1-two-way-prepositions
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/prepositions-in-german-2-akkusativ-accusative-only
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/dative-only-prepositions-in-german-3
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/genitive-only-prepositions-in-german-4
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/how-to-use-im-am-or-um-in-german-let-me-explain
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/german-word-order-explained
Find out more about our lessons here:
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/do-you-want-to-learn-german-or-progress-more-quickly
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/how-long-does-it-take-to-learn-german
https://www.olesentuition.co.uk/single-post/2018/05/24/question-words-in-german
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