Wednesday 21 January 2009

Gender of nouns

It is nice to know rules that help you learn a language but the best way is to listen to expressions and use them. One example of a language rule is for gender of nouns. There are some gender rules for German nouns but you still have to learn the gender for every word because you will often find exceptions to rules.

You can probably guess that males are usually masculine and females are usually feminine, so it is der Vater der Sohn and die Mutter and die Tochter. Exceptions include the word for a girl which is neuter, which is das Mädchen.

The days of the week, the months and all the seasons are masculine. It sounds strange to talk about der Montag, but you may need it and it is useful to know the gender of the days because you would speak about am Montag, on Mondays. So the best way to learn a language is to use it with expressions like in der Nacht (at night) and am Mittag (at noon)/ You are still using the word and recognising that it has a gender but the main thing is that you will say what you want to say.

Bis bald

No comments:

Post a Comment