h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The feminine nouns

To recap. The definite articles are:

Nominative: Die
Accusative: Die
Dative: Der
Genitive: Der

Examples:

*Die* Straße ist naß. *The road* is wet.
Er öffnete *die* Tür. He opened *the door*.
Der Lehrer sagte *der* Mutter, daß das Kind versetzt würde. The teacher said *to the mother* that the child would pass up to the next year. (Notes on indirect speech and the school system are due here - indirect speech will be dealt with later)
Die Schuhe der *Polizistin* waren schmutzig. The policewoman's shoes were dirty.

The feminine nouns are, of course, firstly all female persons. Usually the feminine form is constructed by adding "in" -

Der Lehrer, die Lehrerin,
Der Briefträger, die Briefträgern (postman, post lady)
Der Verkäufer, die Verkäuferin (sales assistant)

If the male version ends in "mann", the female version will end in "frau".

Der Ehemann (the husband), die Ehefrau (wife)

If the male person is simply an adjective, the declension of adjectives applies. This will be explained later, but in this case, you can remember:

Der Bankangestellte, die Bankangestellte (the bank teller)
Der Beauftragte, die Beauftragte - a person with a charge to do something, with power of attorney, or paid to do something on someone's behalf.

(On the face of it, there is no difference between masculine and feminine in this case. This changes according to the article used. Another subject which we will cover at a later date.)

A few common feminine nouns are:

Die Bude. (Bolle's Bulettenbude!.) This is a small room, or a kiosk, a young person's room (slang)
Die Watte - cotton wool (French : la ouate)
Die Pille . The pill
Die Straße - the road/the street
Die Tür
Die Ehe (marriage) ... pronounced Eh-yer
Die Brücke - the bridge

You will notice that many of these words end in "e".

Another ending that is exclusively feminine is "ung". This can be applied to many verbs to form a noun.

Die Zeitung - the Newspaper (not formed directly from a verb)
Die Siedlung - residential area (siedeln = to settle)
Die Hoffnung - hope. (hoffen=to hope)

A further ending is "el". This is found in

Die Kapsel - the capsule
Die Streusel - usually small bits of something edible like chocolate or "hundreds and thousands", strewn over a cake or similar. (Streuselkuchen is a cake covered with a kind of crumble - little lumps of butter/sugar/flour which are sprinkled on the cake and baked to a nice topping)

Plurals of feminine nouns are very often formed by adding "n". But these should all be learnt individually, and that is a subject we shall deal with next week.

Over the weekend we shall look at a few examples of neuter nouns and then continue on into the plurals.

An exception is the /military rank, or title/ Hauptmann (=captain): a female Hauptmann would still be addressed as "Frau Hauptmann", although there is discussion to change that into "Frau Hauptfrau".

Errrm, TC, I know "der Streusel" as a male thing, and Bossel of course too, but that's just a name

I stand corrected. It was difficult to concentrate this morning - I always do these in the office.

I think most of the abstract words ending in "nis" are feminine.

Finsternis, Erlaubnis.

A German fooled me into thinking Ursprung (der) was an exception to the -ung rule. It's not. The "ung" isn't the ending, the word has its roots in Spring.