German 1 Online: Reading Guide for Pages 72-74: Forming Plural Nouns

By now you should be familiar with the navigation of the e-Text on the Connect website, so future reading guides will
assume you can find your way to the correct pages. For this assignment, simply enter “72” in the search bar at the
top where it says “jump to pg” and you will land on page 72.

Page 72
The Plural of Nouns
We have already learned a few plural nouns, unofficially. You should have picked up on some of them
by now: “der Student”, the student, becomes “die Studenten” in the plural. “Das Buch”, the book,
becomes “die Bücher” in the plural. Now we will learn the rules about how to make any noun in
German into the correct plural form.

Things to notice:
• No matter what the original gender of a noun was (der, die or das), in the plural there is only one way to say
‘the’ and that is DIE. Yes, it looks just like the feminine DIE. But the noun that follows will be in the plural
form. So “der Student” becomes “die Studenten” plural, and “das Buch” becomes “die Bücher” plural.
There is no separate ‘masculine plural’ or ‘feminine plural’ in German: there is just plural, period. (As
compared to Spanish, where ‘los’ and ‘las’ are different — in German, both ‘los’ and ‘las’ would be DIE.)
• In English, we just use -s to make the plural of the majority of nouns. Car - Cars, student - students, and so on.
This is not how the majority of German nouns work, so you need to learn to form proper plurals in German.
• Even in English, we have a few older nouns that have irregular plurals. What is the plural of one man? It is two
men, with a vowel change. What is the plural of one child? It is two children with a different ending.
Those nouns in English are all we have left of the older Germanic plural forms, which are fairly complex.
Modern German still uses the different ways of forming plurals, including vowel sound changes and suffixes
like -en and -er, to form the plurals of nearly all German nouns.
• Your book summarizes the plural changes fairly well, but you have to read carefully. It is a complex topic!
Don’t be surprised if you feel confused: there is no easy way to just ‘know’ the plural of a word in German.
There are many rules and overlapping possibilities, which you will come to have a good feeling for over time:
the more you see and use the plural forms, the easier it will get!
• You will need to start memorizing plural forms together with each new noun you learn. When you learn “das
Buch” you should also learn “die Bücher” in the plural. This will get easier with time and familiarity!
• After you have read the chart and the explanation on page 72, consider how I’ve summarized the plural forms
below: you may find it easier or a good overview, but it does have the SAME information as your book.

Rules for Plural Forms of Nouns in German:

Rule 1-A: some nouns don’t change at all in the plural.
das Zimmer - die Zimmer das Fenster - die Fenster der Amerikaner - die Amerikaner

Rule 1-B: some nouns only add an umlaut to the vowel to form the plural.
der Garten - die Gärten die Mutter - die Mütter der Vater - die Väter

Rule 2-A: some nouns add an -e at the end to form the plural.
der Hund - die Hunde der Tisch - die Tische das Boot - die Boote

Rule 2-B: some nouns add an -e PLUS an umlaut to the vowel.

die Hand - die Hände der Platz - die Plätze der Ball - die Bälle

Rule 3-A: some nouns add an -er at the end to form the plural.
das Kind - die Kinder das Bild - die Bilder das Lied - die Lieder

Rule 3-B: some nouns add an -er PLUS an umlaut to the vowel.
das Haus - die Häuser der Mann - die Männer der Wald - die Wälder
 Rule 4-A: many nouns add an -en at the end. If the singular noun ends in -a, the -a changes to -en.
das Bett - die Betten der Student - die Studenten die Wohnung - die Wohnungen
das Hemd - die Hemden der Doktor - die Doktoren die Firma - die Firmen

Rule 4-B: some nouns add an -n at the end — for nouns that already end in -e in the singular.
die Lampe - die Lampen die Katze - die Katzen der Junge - die Jungen

Rule 4-C: some nouns add an -nen at the end — only for nouns that have the feminine -in suffix already.
die Studentin - die Studentinnen die Professorin - die Professorinnen

Rule 5: a few nouns add an -s to the end — only for nouns taken from other languages like Latin or English.
das Auto - die Autos das Handy - die Handys die Kamera - die Kameras

Page 73-74

Übung 19, 20 und 21

You will complete exercises 19, 20 and 21 as part of your Connect Aufgabe, so you can ignore the
textbook page for now until you complete that assignment.

Now that you have learned how to form plurals correctly in German, you should complete the Aufgabe on the
Connect website. After you have completed those exercises, move on to the next reading guide (pages 74-79),
where we wrap up chapter 2 and learn cultural information about living in Germany and German cities.