German uses three definite articles, “der” (masculine), “die” (feminine), or “das” (neuter), all meaning “the”, to show the gender of a noun. As we recommended in Einheit 1.10, we strongly encourage you to memorize the corresponding definite article with each new noun you learn.

There are also indefinite articles in German, meaning “a” or “an” in English, for the three grammatical genders: “ein” (masculine), “eine” (feminine), and “ein” (neuter). Obviously, there is no indefinite article for the plural (just like in English, you couldn’t say “a books”).

der (m.)  –> ein      die (f.) –> eine      das (n.) –> ein       die (pl.) –> ∅

There are several ways to express negation in German. Look at the following three sentences:

Ist das ein Tisch? Nein, das ist kein Tisch.

Ist das eine Lampe? Nein, das ist keine Lampe.

Sind das Amerikaner? Nein, das sind keine Amerikaner, das sind Kanadier.

The negative form of the indefinite article “ein” is “kein” (for masculine and neuter) and the negative form of the indefinite article “eine” is “keine” (for feminine). There is also a plural form “keine“. In English, they mean “not a”, “not any”, “no”.

If you are not negating a noun preceded by an indefinite article (“ein“/”eine“) in the sentence, you use “nicht” (not). The “nicht” goes in front of the element you want to negate, for example:

Die Wand ist nicht weiß. 

Monique wohnt nicht in Deutschland. 

When you don’t want to negate a particular word or expression, you place “nicht” at the end of the sentence. 

Heute regnet es nicht. 

Stefan kommt auch nicht. 

“Nicht” is much more complicated to use than “kein” and you will continue to see examples of where to place it in a sentence in the next few units.

In English, most plurals are formed by adding an “-s” or “-es” to the noun (e.g., students, classes, pens), although there are some irregular plural forms in English (e.g., women, children, geese).

Forming the plural of nouns in German is a bit more complicated than in English. There are several rules one could memorize, but that wouldn’t account for the exceptions. We recommend that you learn the plural form of each noun when you are learning the noun itself: das Bücherregal, die Bücherregale.

Some dictionaries (like dict.cc as shown in the screenshot) write out the plural forms. Other dictionaries only indicate the plural form by abbreviations; you need to understand how to form a plural when you see those abbreviations, for example:

die Lampe, -n  (this means: you just add -n to the noun; die Lampen is the plural form)

das Fenster, – (this means: you don’t add an ending to the noun; die Fenster is the plural form)

die Mutter, -¨  (this means: you don’t add an ending to the noun, just the Umlaut on the vowel; die Mütter is the plural form)