Nouns are a part of speech which refers to things, people, places and so on. Unlike English nouns, German nouns are gendered, which means they are preceded by gendered adjectives or articles.

There are three genders and their articles are as follows:

• der (masculine)
• die (feminine)
• das (neuter)

The gender of a noun is generally arbitrary and holds no intrinsic meaning, for example a glass is neuter while butter is feminine.

Das Glas steht auf dem Tisch.
The glass is on the table.

Die Butter steht auf dem Tisch.
The butter is on the table.

The gender of nouns must be learned for each noun.

Notes:

The plural is not affected by the gender of the noun and uses a different article. The article of the noun also changes based on the case/role of the noun in the sentence, as you might have noticed with dem Tisch in the examples above. Both topics will be covered in latter lessons.