Der, Die, Das: Which Noun Endings Predict the Article (We Counted)

Updated 5 November 2026 · Wortweg

Put this guide into practice

English has one article. German has three, and a beginner meets them on day one: der Tisch, die Lampe, das Fenster. The usual advice is "just memorise it", which is true and useless. This guide does something different: it counts. We took the nouns our players actually practise, A1 to C2, and checked which endings predict which article and how reliably.

Is there a default article in German?

Not a safe one, but there is a lean. Across our 1,842 nouns:

So if you must guess blind, die wins slightly more often than der, and das is the long shot. But a blind guess is right less than half the time. The ending does much better.

Which noun endings tell you the article?

Here is every ending we tested, ordered from most reliable to least. "Reliable" means the share of nouns with that ending that take the winning article.

Three groups fall out of this table, and they are worth learning in this order.

1. Endings with no exceptions in our list: -ung, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -tion, -tät

There are no exceptions in this list. These are useful word-forming suffixes; matching the final letters alone is not enough for every German word (for example, der Sprung). Learn the article with the noun: die Zeitung, die Rechnung, die Universität. This is also the biggest single win, because -ung nouns are everywhere in adult German (forms, letters, the news). The plural is just as safe: add -en (die Wohnungen).

2. The strong hint: -e is usually die

Of 392 nouns ending in -e, 348 are die. The exceptions are not random, which makes them easy to fence off:

• Male people and animals are der: der Junge, der Kollege, der Kunde, der Löwe, der Affe. Biology beats the ending.
• A handful of abstract der words: der Name, der Gedanke, der Glaube, der Wille, plus der Käse, der Kaffee, der Tee.
• Ge-…-e words lean das: das Gemüse, das Gebäude, das Gemälde. Add das Auge, das Ende and das Knie and you have nearly every neuter one.

3. The trap endings: -er, -en, -el

These lean der, but not by enough to trust. Among 151 nouns in -er, 21 are die (die Mutter, die Schwester, die Tochter) and 39 are das (das Fenster, das Zimmer). For these endings, the article has to be memorised with the word. No shortcut exists, so don't spend energy looking for one.

Why is it das Mädchen?

Because the grammar looks at the ending, not the person. -chen (and -lein) make a word small, and every diminutive is neuter: das Mädchen, das Brötchen, das Hähnchen. Careful with look-alikes: our list has 5 nouns ending in -chen that are der, and none of them are diminutives. der Kuchen and der Knochen just happen to end in those letters.

The same trick applies to -um: Latin loanwords are das (das Zentrum, das Studium, das Visum), while the native words der Baum, der Raum and der Traum are der.

How do you remember der, die, das for the rest?

Endings settle about half the problem. For the other half, three habits do the work:

1. Never store a noun without its article. Not "Tisch = table" but "der Tisch". Say it as one sound. Your ear will start to flag die Tisch as wrong before you can explain why.
2. Learn the plural in the same breath. der Fuß, die Füße. Plural patterns correlate with gender (see German plural rules, by the numbers), so each one props up the other.
3. Retrieve, then check. Try to produce the article before you see it. Check the answer after attempting recall, and revisit words you missed.

Keep the umlauts real while you do this. der Fuß and die Füße, never "Fuss / Fuesse". If you can't type them yet, our guide to typing ä, ö, ü and ß on any keyboard takes two minutes.

Wortweg is a free daily word puzzle built on this exact list. Every word you find shows its article, plural, meaning and an example sentence, so the article arrives with the word every time.

Questions learners ask

How the vocabulary statistics were counted: corpus counts on this page are computed from Wortweg's own word list (3,306 CEFR-tagged words, 1,842 of them nouns with article and plural), the same list the game draws from. It is a learner's core vocabulary, not the whole German language, so treat the percentages as what you will meet in practice, not as grammar law.