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Language notes
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der, die, das
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der Betrieb
- the company
die Chefin
- the (woman) boss
das Problem
- the problem
die Fragen
- the questions
Nouns in German
are classified as being either masculine, feminine or neuter. This is called
'gender'. This convenient grammatical label applies to people as well as things.
Since it's not
always predictable which gender a noun is, it has to be learnt each time. The
gender also affects the articles that precede the nouns:
der (masculine),
die (feminine),
das (neuter)
die (plural for all)
Note
that :
In German all
nouns are written with an initial capital letter;
for example:
der
Betrieb.
This makes nouns easy to identify when reading German.
Nouns as well as articles may change their forms; this
indicates their varying relationships to other parts of the sentence. This is
referred to as 'cases'; there are four cases in German.
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