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Thenouns of theGerman language have several properties, some unique. As in many relatedIndo-European languages,German nouns possess agrammatical gender; the three genders are masculine, feminine, and neuter. Words for objects without obvious masculine or feminine characteristics like 'bridge' or 'rock' can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. German nouns aredeclined (change form) depending on theirgrammatical case (their function in a sentence) and whether they aresingular or plural. German has four cases:nominative,accusative,dative andgenitive.

German is unusual among languages using theLatin alphabet in that all nouns are alwayscapitalized (for example, "the book" is always written as"dasBuch"). OtherHigh German languages, such asLuxembourgish, also capitalize bothproper andcommon nouns. Only a handful of other languages capitalize their nouns, mainlyregional languages with orthographic conventions inspired by German, such asLow German andSaterland Frisian. Under the influence of German, the Scandinavian languages formerly capitalized their nouns;Danish retained the practice until 1948.

Nouncompounds are written together with no spacing (for example, the German word for "spy satellite" is"Spionagesatellit").Plurals are normally formed by adding-e,-en,-er (or nothing) to the noun, and sometimes a vowel is also changed (theumlaut). Moreover, recentloanwords from French and English often keep the-s plural ending.

N-noun:

A masculine or neuter noun with genitive singular and nominative plural ending in-(e)n is called ann-noun orweak noun (German:schwaches Substantiv). Sometimes these terms are extended to feminine nouns with genitive singular and nominative plural-en.

For the four cases, nominative, accusative, dative and genitive, the main forms of declension are:

I:Feminine nouns usually have the same form in all four cases.
a) nom., acc.die Frau, dat., gen.der Frau

Exceptions are:

• Old declensions likeFrau/Fraw with genitive and dative singularder Frauen/Frawen (in older usage)
• Words derived from Latin with nominative singular in -a and genitive singular-ae/-ä (in older usage)
• Proper nouns derived from Latin:Maria (“Mary” in English) with genitive singularMariä, Mariens, Marias and(der) Maria.
• Proper nouns which have two genitive forms likeBrunhilds Speer (“Brunhild's spear”) andder Speer der Brunhild (“the spear of Brunhild”).
• The wordsMama, Mami, Mutter, Mutti, Oma, Omi which have forms likedie Tasche der Mama, but alsoMamas Tasche.

II:Personal names,all neuter andmost masculine nouns have genitive case-(e)s endings: normally-es if one syllable long,-s if more. Traditionally the nouns in this group also add-e in the dative case, but this is now often ignored.
a) nom.der Mann, acc.den Mann, dat.dem Mann(e), gen.des Mann(e)s
b) nom.das Kind, acc.das Kind, dat.dem Kind(e), gen.des Kind(e)s.

III:Masculine n-nouns take-(e)n for genitive, dative and accusative: this is used for masculine nouns ending with-e denoting people and animals, masculine nouns ending with-and, -ant, -ent, -ist (mostly denoting people), and a few others (mostly animate nouns).
a) nom.der Drache, acc.den Drachen, dat.dem Drachen, gen.des Drachen
b) nom.der Prinz, acc.den Prinzen, dat.dem Prinzen, gen.des Prinzen.

IV:A few masculine nouns take-(e)n for accusative and dative, and-(e)ns for genitive.
a) nom.der Buchstabe, acc.den Buchstaben, dat.dem Buchstaben, gen.des Buchstabens
b) nom.der Glaube, acc.den Glauben, dat.dem Glauben, gen.des Glaubens.

I: In the dative case,all nouns which do not already have an-n or-s ending add-n.
a) nom., acc.die Kinder, dat.den Kindern, gen.der Kinder
b) nom., acc.die Frauen, dat.den Frauen, gen.der Frauen.

• Given the nominative singular, genitive singular, and nominative plural of a noun, it is possible to determine its declension.
• Note that for most feminine nouns, all singular forms are identical. This means that since n-nouns in general have all plural forms identical, all feminine n-nouns are effectively indeclinable.
• The dative plural of all nouns ends in -n if such an ending does not already exist, except that of nouns that form the plural with -s, which are usuallyloan words.
• Most nouns do not take declensions in the accusative or singular dative cases. A class of masculine nouns, called "weak nouns," takes the ending -n or -en in all cases except the nominative.

Dative forms with the ending-e, known in German as theDativ-e (dem Gotte, dem Manne) are mostly restricted to formal usage, but widely limited to poetic style. Such forms are not commonly found in modern prose texts, except in fixed expressions (such asim Stande sein: "to be able") and for certain words (e.g.(dem) Hause, Wege orTode) which are, however, quite numerous; in these cases, omitting the-e would be similarly unusual. This ending is also still used semi-productively in poetry and music, mostly for the purposes of meter and rhyme.

Nevertheless, in the genitive, the ending-es is used …

• necessarily if the word ends with a sibilant (des Hauses, des Stoßes, des Schusses)
• usually by monosyllabic words(des Gottes, des Mannes)
• commonly if it ends on the letterd

Only words of more syllables usually add a simple-s(des Königs).

In colloquial usage, moreover, singular inflection of weak masculine nouns may be limited to those ending in-e(der Name – dem Namen). Other nouns of this class are sometimes not inflected. Thus one might occasionally heardem Spatz, dem Idiot instead of the more formaldem Spatzen, dem Idioten.

• * vernacularly:dem Herz

Many foreign nouns have irregular plurals, for example:

All German nouns are capitalized.^[1] German,Luxembourgish,Plautdietsch andSaterland Frisian are the only major languages to capitalize their nouns. This was also done in theDanish language until 1948 and sometimes in (New) Latin, whileEarly Modern English showed tendencies towards noun capitalization.^{[citation needed][a]}

Capitalization is not restricted to nouns. Other words are often capitalized when they arenominalized (for instancedas Deutsche ‘the German language’, a nominalized adjective).

As in other Germanic languages, German nouns can becompound in effectively unlimited numbers, as inRinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz ('Cattle Marking and Beef Labelling Supervision Duties Delegation Law', the name of an actual law passed inMecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1999), orDonaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft ('Danube Steamboat Shipping Company', 1829).

UnlikeEnglish compounds, German compound nouns are usually written together as asingle word: 'spy satellite' is thusSpionagesatellit and 'mad cow disease'Rinderwahn. Compound nouns take the gender of the last component noun (thehead). In special cases, German compounds are hyphenated, as inUS-Botschaft ("US embassy") or100-prozentig ("100 percent").

In addition, there is the grammatical feature of theFugen-"s": certain compounds introduce an "s" between the noun stems, historically marking the genitive case of the first noun (cf.iḍāfah), but it occurs frequently after nouns which do not take an "s" in their genitive cases.

In many instances, the compound is acceptable both with and without the "s", but there are many cases where the "s" is mandatory and this cannot be deduced from grammatical rules, e.g.Hochzeitskleid = "wedding dress",Liebeslied = "love song",Abfahrtszeit = "time of departure",Arbeitsamt = "employment agency".

Occurrence of theFugen-"s" seems to be correlated to certain suffixes (of the first stem); compounds with words in-tum,-ling,-ion,-tät,-heit,-keit,-schaft,-sicht,-ung and nominalized infinitives in-en mostly do take the "s", while feminine words not ending in-ion,-tät,-heit,-keit,-schaft,-sicht,-ung mostly do not, but there are exceptions. Use of the "s" is mostly optional in compounds in which the second element is a participle.^[2]

To reduce length or to highlight distinctions, a first or final part of a compound is sometimes mentioned only once but applies to more than one compound noun. For example:

• Bildergalerien und-ausstellungen ("picture galleries and [picture] exhibitions")
• Nähe Haupt- und Busbahnhof ("near the main railway [station] and bus station")

As in English, some nouns (e.g. mass nouns) only have a singular form (singularia tantum); other nouns only have a plural form (pluralia tantum):

• Das All,der Durst,der Sand ("the Universe", "thirst", "sand")
• Die Kosten,die Ferien ("costs", "the holidays")

Traps abound in both directions here: common mass nouns in Englishare not mass nouns in German, and vice versa:

• information –Informationen,die Information ("the piece of information"),die Informationen ("the pieces of information")
• the police are (pl.) =die Polizei ist (sg.)

Again as in English, some words change their meaning when changing their number:

• Geld ("money") –Gelder ("different sources of money")
• Wein ("wine") –die Weine ("different types of wine")

A few words have two different plurals with distinct meanings. For example:

• Wort ("word") –Wörter (isolated words, as in "five words") -Worte (connected, meaningful words, as in "his last words")
• Bau –Bauten ("buildings") –Baue ("burrows")

Some words share the singular and can only be distinguished by their gender and sometimes their plural (compare “bases” in English, which can be the plural of two distinct words, “base” and “basis”):

• Gehalt –das Gehalt,die Gehälter ("salary") –der Gehalt,die Gehalte ("content")
• Band –das Band,die Bänder ("ribbon") –der Band,die Bände ("volume (of a book)")
• Teil –das Teil,die Teile (physical "piece" e.g. from a machine) –der Teil,die Teile (conceptual "part" e.g. from a speech)
• See –der See,die Seen ("lake") –die See ("sea", no plural form) –die See,die Seen (nautical term for "(large) wave")
• Kiefer –der Kiefer,die Kiefer ("jawbone") –die Kiefer,die Kiefern ("pine tree")

• German grammar
• German verbs
• German orthography
• Standard German phonology

For a list of words relating to German nouns, see theGerman nouns category of words inWiktionary, the free dictionary.

• German Nouns and Gender – German grammar lesson covering nouns and gender

• German grammar
• German declension
• Nouns by language

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