Plural — German Noun Plurals

A free app to practise German noun plurals across 2,556 nouns from the official Goethe and Aspekte word lists, A1 to C2.

The five plural endings

German plurals take -en or -n, -e, -er, -s, or no ending at all, sometimes with an umlaut on the stem vowel. Feminine nouns almost always take -n or -en and never take an umlaut. Masculine and neuter nouns in -er, -en and -el usually add nothing.

The plural article

Whatever the ending, the plural article is die in the nominative and accusative and den in the dative, where the noun adds -n unless it already ends in -n or -s.

German noun plurals, and why there are five of them

English forms almost every plural with -s. German has five endings, an optional umlaut, and no reliable way to predict which combination a given noun takes. That is why plurals are usually learned one word at a time — and why drilling them is more effective than studying them.

Plural contains 2,556 nouns from A1 to C2, taken from the same Goethe and Aspekte word lists as the articles app, so the two can be practised on the same vocabulary at the same level. Two modes are available: type the plural, or identify which of the five patterns a noun follows. The second is quicker and better for recognising a pattern you have half-learned.

What predicts a plural

Gender narrows it down more than most learners realise. Feminine nouns overwhelmingly take -n or -en. Masculine and neuter nouns of one syllable often take -e, frequently with an umlaut. Nouns already ending in -er, -el or -en usually add nothing at all, which is why der Lehrer and die Lehrer look identical and are a standing source of confusion in listening exams.

After each answer the app names the pattern that applied, so the drill builds recognition of the pattern rather than just the individual word.

German has no single plural ending. There are five main patterns, an umlaut that may or may not join them, and a group of nouns that change nothing at all. Which one a noun takes is a property of the word — but gender predicts a great deal, so the system is far less arbitrary than it first appears.

The five endings

ending	example	typical of
-en / -n	die Frau → die Frauen	most feminine nouns
-e	der Hund → die Hunde	many masculine and neuter
-er	das Kind → die Kinder	mostly neuter, usually with an umlaut
-s	das Auto → die Autos	loanwords and abbreviations
no ending	der Lehrer → die Lehrer	masculine and neuter in -er, -en, -el

Gender predicts the pattern

Feminine nouns take -n or -en almost without exception, and they never take an umlaut. Since the feminine endings are themselves predictable — anything in -ung, -heit, -keit, -schaft or -ion is feminine — a large share of German plurals can be worked out rather than memorised.

die Wohnung → die Wohnungen
die Freiheit → die Freiheiten
die Nation → die Nationen

Feminine nouns ending in -in double the n before the ending: die Lehrerin → die Lehrerinnen, die Ärztin → die Ärztinnen. This group is large, because it covers the feminine form of every profession.

The nouns that change nothing

Masculine and neuter nouns ending in -er, -en or -el usually add no ending at all. Only the article tells you it is plural.

der Lehrer → die Lehrer
das Fenster → die Fenster
der Löffel → die Löffel

Some of this group take an umlaut instead of an ending: der Vater → die Väter, der Bruder → die Brüder, der Garten → die Gärten.

The umlaut

The stem vowels a, o, u and au can shift to ä, ö, ü, äu in the plural, usually alongside an ending.

der Mann → die Männer
die Hand → die Hände
der Baum → die Bäume
das Haus → die Häuser

It never happens to e or i, and never to a feminine noun taking -en. So die Frau stays die Frauen, not die Fräuen.

-s is for borrowed words

The smallest group, and the easiest to spot: das Auto, das Hotel, das Baby, der Chef, das Sofa, die Kamera. If the word looks like it came from English, French or Italian, it probably takes -s. Abbreviations do too: der Lkw → die Lkws.

The article never varies

Whatever the ending, the plural article is die in the nominative and accusative — for every gender. That is one of the few places where German gets simpler in the plural rather than harder.

case	article	noun
Nominativ	die	die Kinder
Akkusativ	die	die Kinder
Dativ	den	die Kindern
Genitiv	der	die Kinder

The dative plural adds -n to the noun — unless it already ends in -n or -s, in which case there is nothing to add: den Frauen, den Autos.

How to learn them

Learn the plural with the noun, like the article. The most efficient form to memorise is all three parts at once: der Hund, die Hunde. Learning the singular alone means relearning it later.

Use gender as your first guess. Feminine? Almost certainly -n or -en. Masculine or neuter ending in -er, -en, -el? Probably no ending. That covers a large share of everyday vocabulary before you have memorised anything.

Drill the ones you get wrong. The practice app tracks which nouns you miss and brings them back rather than repeating the ones you already know.

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