The most difficult task when learning German as a native English speaker is the tedious acquisition of new words. That process becomes particularly difficult with nouns, which require the memorization of a complementary trait, the grammatical gender.
German nouns are each assigned one of the three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine or neuter. The gender helps determine how a noun is declined according to the number (i.e. single or plural) and case (i.e. nominative, accusative, dative and genitive). Fortunately, a noun’s gender is often related to its morphology or semantics. These patterns can expedite the acquisition of new nouns by averting the memorization of an additional trait alongside the definition of a noun. Unfortunately, few patterns are accurate in every case, so that exceptions need to be memorized nevertheless.
The majority of German nouns are masculine, followed by the neuter and finally feminine. An enumeration of 2,162 simple nouns selected from a basic vocabulary had the following partition: 67% masculine, 20% neuter and 13% feminine.1
Linguistic morphology is the identification, analysis and description of units of language called morphemes, which include words and affixes. These morphemes are often used to guess a noun’s gender with various levels of accuracy. The most common affix used to determine gender is a noun’s suffix, followed by certain prefixes. Similarly, a noun’s ending often matches a gender.
-er when referring to people| Morpheme | Accuracy | Correct | Example | Wrong | Exception |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
-ang |
88.8% | 103 | der Anfang | 13 | … |
-ich |
71.0% | 103 | der Teppich | 42 | das Reich |
-us |
77.0% | 493 | der Zirkus | 147 | … |
-ist |
96.1% | 149 | der Geist | 6 | die Frist |
-und |
92.5% | 74 | der Hund | 6 | … |
-aum |
98.7% | 76 | der Traum | 1 | … |
-el |
23.2% | 255 | der Vogel | 842 | … |
-er |
79.8% | 2586 | der Abstauber | 653 | die Jungfer |
-all |
83.2% | 104 | der Zufall | 21 | … |
-ismus |
99.2% | 246 | der Atheisumus | 2 | … |
-ling |
93.7% | 177 | der Liebling | 12 | … |
-ant |
91.3% | 73 | der Elefant | 7 | … |
-en |
29.5% | 484 | der Garten | 1157 | … |
-or |
82.8% | 173 | der Motor | 36 | … |
-ner |
96.5% | 249 | der Zöllner | 9 | … |
-ig |
65.7% | 44 | der Honig | 23 | … |
-om are typically derived from
foreign words| Morpheme | Accuracy | Correct | Example | Wrong | Exception |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
-li |
44.2% | 19 | das Müseli | 24 | der Juli |
-em |
90.9% | 130 | das Problem | 13 | … |
-tum |
92.4% | 73 | das Eigentum | 6 | … |
-chen |
84.6% | 264 | das Mädchen | 48 | … |
-le |
12.7% | 62 | das Häusle | 427 | … |
-ment |
93.6% | 88 | das Dokument | 6 | … |
Ge- |
41.3% | 304 | das Gebirge | 432 | … |
-o |
54.7% | 221 | das Studio | 183 | … |
-ium |
100.0% | 222 | das Gymnasium | 0 | … |
-el |
23.2% | 255 | das Übel | 842 | … |
-ett |
98.8% | 80 | das Bett | 1 | … |
-erl |
82.8% | 24 | das Busserl | 5 | … |
-ma |
72.7% | 72 | das Plasma | 27 | … |
-lein |
95.7% | 22 | das Vöglein | 1 | … |
-nis |
72.3% | 68 | das Befugnis | 26 | … |
-um |
83.5% | 462 | das Museum | 91 | … |
-om |
71.6% | 58 | das Atom | 23 | … |
-tel |
43.8% | 57 | das Mittel | 73 | … |
-ness
(-heit, -keit),
-ty(-tät) and -ship
(-schaft)-ie are often equal and have similar
morphology to English words ending in -y. Similarly, nouns
ending in -ade, -age, -anz,
-enz, -ette, -ine,
-ion, -tur, -isse,
-itis, -ive are typically borrowed from
foreign languages including English, with which it often shares a
similar morphology-in when refering to female people,
occupations, or nationalities-t that are derived form verbs that are
normally irregular| Morpheme | Accuracy | Example | Example | Wrong | Exception |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
-isse |
100.0% | 11 | die Hornisse | 0 | … |
-keit |
99.6% | 247 | die Bissigkeit | 1 | … |
-ik |
93.5% | 361 | die Grammatik | 25 | … |
-itis |
94.3% | 33 | die Iritis | 2 | … |
-erin |
98.2% | 483 | die Italienerin | 9 | … |
-ur |
60.9% | 134 | die Prozedur | 86 | … |
-ive |
81.8% | 18 | die Initiative | 4 | … |
-ade |
89.9% | 62 | die Parade | 7 | … |
-tät |
99.1% | 211 | die Universität | 2 | … |
-ei |
79.5% | 136 | die Partei | 35 | das Ei |
-anz |
59.3% | 51 | die Bilanz | 35 | … |
-schaft |
96.9% | 127 | die Mannschaft | 4 | … |
-tur |
95.6% | 87 | die Konjunktur | 4 | … |
-ette |
92.3% | 60 | die Serviette | 5 | … |
-heit |
98.1% | 159 | die Freiheit | 3 | … |
-e |
83.3% | 5553 | die Ente | 1111 | das Benzin |
-enz |
90.7% | 127 | die Frequenz | 13 | … |
-ion |
95.8% | 684 | die Nation | 30 | … |
-in |
61.4% | 776 | die Studentin | 487 | das Benzin |
-age |
93.0% | 132 | die Blamage | 10 | … |
-ine |
87.7% | 121 | die Gardine | 17 | … |
-t |
35.0% | 1369 | die Fahrt | 2543 | … |
-ung |
98.5% | 1592 | die Übersetzung | 25 | … |
-ie |
96.0% | 958 | die Drogerie | 40 | … |
Semantic patterns, which are based on the definition of a noun, are beyond the scope of this project. The analysis of these patterns presents several unique challenges. Definitions can often be ambiguous, such that it can be hard to match a definition to a semantic pattern. Additionally, the available resources to analyze these patterns are not designed for script based analysis. It would require heavy crawling of websites, which may cause high load on servers. Definitions also vary between sources, such that one process needed to match a semantic pattern may return different results depending on the source.
Gerhard Augst, Untersuchungen zum Morpheminventar der deutschen Gegenwartssprache (Tübingen: Narr, 1975)↩︎