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Free practice · German articles

Der, die or das?

Pick the article for the most common German nouns. Every answer shows the plural, a sentence, and how it sounds. No account needed.

155 nouns from the first 5 levels of the course, most common first. The course has 10,366.

Question 1 of 100 right

Which article?

Geld

money

Press 1, 2 or 3 to answer.

Some help

Endings that tell you the article.

A German noun’s gender is not random, but it is only sometimes predictable. These endings are reliable enough to lean on.

der masculine

  • -er people and tools: der Lehrer, der Computer
  • -ling der Schmetterling
  • -ismus der Tourismus
  • -ig, -ich der Honig, der Teppich
  • -ant, -ent, -ist, -or der Student, der Motor
  • days, months, seasons, weather der Montag, der Winter, der Regen
Only people and tools make -er reliable: das Fenster and die Butter end the same way.

die feminine

  • -ung die Zeitung
  • -heit, -keit die Freiheit, die Möglichkeit
  • -schaft die Freundschaft
  • -ion, -tät die Nation, die Universität
  • -ik, -ie, -ei die Musik, die Familie, die Bäckerei
  • -ur die Natur
  • -in for people: die Lehrerin
  • most nouns in -e die Straße, die Lampe
The -e rule has famous exceptions: der Junge, der Name, das Ende, der Käse.

das neuter

  • -chen, -lein das Mädchen, das Fräulein
  • -ment das Instrument, das Dokument
  • -um das Museum, das Zentrum
  • -tum das Eigentum
  • -ma das Thema, das Klima
  • Ge- collectives das Gebäude, das Gemüse
  • verbs used as nouns das Essen, das Leben
Watch for der Moment, der Irrtum, die Firma, die Geschichte and der Gedanke.

A compound noun takes the article of its last part: das Haus and die Tür make die Haustür. Many everyday nouns follow no ending at all, though: der Tisch, die Tür, das Bett. Their article has to travel with the noun, which is why the course shows every noun with its article and why it pays to practice them in the order you will meet them.

Look one up

Is it der, die or das?

Type a noun to check its article and plural against the 10,366 nouns in the course.

The same material, inside the course

What changes with an account.

This page is a taste. In the course, gender practice is one of four drills that follow the words you are actually learning.

Words come back on a schedule

Each word gets its own spaced-repetition timing, so the ones you miss return sooner and the ones you know stay out of the way.

Lessons in small batches, typed both ways

Meet a few words at a time with article, plural, and meaning, then type them German to English and English to German.

Four drills, and the whole course

Gender, verb forms, prepositions, and sentence gaps open as your vocabulary grows, across a course of more than 17,000 entries.

Get startedSee how the course works

The nouns, plurals, and sentences here come from the Wortplay course. Its vocabulary draws on the Ding dictionary and on frequency data from wordfreq; audio is generated German speech. About the sources.