I wrote a blog post about German plural nouns (Which German nouns take an e or umlaut & e in the plural?) a few months ago. If you read it, you’ll recognize the first few paragraphs of the general introduction to German plural nouns. In that case you’ll have my permission to scroll half way down this post to get to the new information. 😉
When my students come across German gender for the first time, and they’re learning whether a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter, they often despair. Then after a while they get used to it. And when they come across the plurals and they hear ‘Yes, there are different endings in the plural’, they despair again, and they’re saying, why can’t it be like English?
English is easy. Just put an S at the end and be done with it.
Actually, it isn’t. Okay, fair enough. Most English nouns end in S (tea, teas) but… Some add ES (hero, heroes) Y changes to IES (baby, babies) F can turn into VES (calf, calves).
Some stay the same ( sheep, sheep) Some change completely ( mouse, mice). So it isn’t really that easy either.
In that case, maybe the German plural isn’t quite as bad as some people think.
And the first bit of good news is you don’t have to worry about the gender. Whether the word is masculine, feminine or neuter, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to worry if it’s a der, die or das because in the plural, they’re all ‘die’.
The not so good news is that it is really best to learn a word with its gender and the plural. This is the recommendation you’ll find in virtually every textbook.
So if you’ve learned that the German word for table is Tisch, don’t just learn table = Tisch. Instead, learn Table = der Tisch(e).
And if you write it down, you could write it down like I’ve done there or you could have written der Tisch, die Tische.
That’s the best way to learn it. Learn all the time with the gender and the plural. Having said that, though, there are some rules worth knowing. Some of them are really good. Others are the typical German rules. You know, those rules which also have lots of exceptions, but it’s a good guess anyway.
In this blog post I’m telling you about one of those rules: Which German nouns do not change in the plural?
Most masculine nouns ending in EL, EN or ER do not change in the plural. So whether you’re talking about one grandson or more than one grandson, the word is still Enkel.
The only difference is that in the singular, you would have had der or das. And in the plural you have die.
Do you remember that one really nice rule that all nouns in ‘chen’ or ‘lein’ are always neuter? And they mean something little. So they are always das. Well, the other good news is that they also don’t change. So the only change is the article, which goes from ‘der’ or ‘das’ to ‘die’. So if you’re talking about one little duck, you may say das Entlein, or das Entchen. If you have more than one, it’s still Entchen, or Entlein.
The rabbit, das Kaninchen, and more than one is die Kaninchen. So the word does not change. It doesn’t make any difference whether you’re talking about one rabbit or two rabbits. The word is the same. You may have more mess though.
The following is a list in alphabetical order, but don’t forget what I said above: Most masculine nouns ending in EL, EN or ER do not change in the plural. Yes, most, not all. You can still come across masculine nouns ending in EL, EN or ER which do change in the plural, like der Bruder – die Brüder.
- Der Enkel – die Enkel
- Das Entlein – die Entlein
- Das Entchen – die Entchen
- Der Fehler – die Fehler
- Das Fenster – die Fenster
- Der Gürtel – die Gürtel
- Der Helfer – die Helfer
- Der Jäger – die Jäger
- Das Kabel – die Kabel
- Das Kaninchen – die Kaninchen
- Das Kissen – die Kissen
- Der Käse – die Käse (an exception, but the plural is rarely used)
- Der Kuchen – die Kuchen
- Das Leder – die Leder
- Der Lehrer – die Lehrer
- Der Löffel – die Löffel
- Das Mädchen – die Mädchen
- Das Mäuslein – die Mäuslein
- Das Messer – die Messer
- Der Onkel – die Onkel
- Der Reifen – die Reifen
- Der Retter – die Retter
- Der Schlüssel – die Schlüssel
- Der Wagen – die Wagen
- Der Würfel – die Würfel
- Das Zeichen – die Zeichen
- Das Zimmer – die Zimmer
This blog post and the following video has been taken from my online course German gender #2 – the plurals of German nouns. Check it out if you wish to learn more. And if you like and want to buy it, use the coupon code BLOGPOST to get 10% off.
This page contains affiliate links to Amazon. It means I’ll get a few pence if you buy anything – at no extra cost to you.
Alternatively, if you prefer books to videos, you’ll find this and lots more in my book German Gender – Is it der, die or das? which you can buy as paperback or kindle.
But the big question is: What do you do with these lists of words? Reading them is one thing, but to use them is better. You can prepare your own vocabulary list and then make sentences with them. You can do that with any paper or electronic notebook. Or you could buy my notebook which I designed specially for German vocab learners. It has space for vocabulary lists and sentences. You can even choose one of two colours ☺
