One way that we can categorize German is by how they are declined, or put into different forms. In German, they fall into two main groups, weak and strong, though sometimes you’ll also see a noun categorized as mixed. Knowing the group a noun belongs to will help you use the right endings when you use it in forms that reflect its and .
Case & Number | Weak Noun | Strong Noun | Mixed Noun |
|---|---|---|---|
nominative singular | Student(student) | Haus(house) | Name(name) |
genitive singular | Studenten | Hauses | Namens |
nominative singular | Studenten | Häuser | Namen |
nominative singular | Studenten | Häusern | Namen |
Though knowing a noun’s gender is essential to picking the right forms of the words that go with the noun, like its article (der, die, das), knowing a nouns declension group is more important if you’re trying to pick the right endings for the noun itself.
In this post, we’ll introduce these three declension patterns, discuss how to decline nouns in each group, and give you some tips for how to learn and study the declensions of different German nouns. Ready to have a look? Let’s dive in!
A declension is a pattern you can follow to put a noun into different forms depending on its role or meaning in a sentence. In German, the form of a noun will depend on its case and number.
Number → German nouns can be singular (for one) or plural (for more than one)
Case → In German, a noun’s case depends on its grammatical role in a sentence. Here are the rough descriptions:
Nominative is for subjects
Genitive is for possessors
Dative is for indirect objects (recipients)
Accusative is for direct objects
Notice that the noun Hund(dog) receives different endings when used in different cases and numbers: these endings are dictated by its declension pattern!
Mein Hund beißt nicht.
My dog doesn’t bite.
In unserer Nachbarschaft gibt es einen Haufen Hunde.
There are a lot of dogs in our neighborhood.
Wir gehen oft mit den Hunden aus dem Tierheim spazieren.
We often go for walks with the dogs from the shelter.
Die Pfote des Hundes ist verletzt. Wir sollten ihn zum Tierarzt bringen.
The dog’s paw is injured. We should take him to the vet.
See how the ending of Hund is different in every sentence? The respective ending a noun takes depends on what class it belongs to.
German has two main noun declension patterns: weak and strong. Some nouns might also be categorized as mixed if they share some features of both groups.
You won’t be able to tell what class a noun belongs to just by looking at the dictionary form, but luckily most dictionaries will tell you. More comprehensive online dictionaries will often provide you with a noun’s complete declension pattern, making it really easy!
Monolingual paper dictionaries in German may give you a dictionary entry that looks like this:
Selfie [ˈsɛlfi], das; -s, -s
In general, a noun is weak if both the plural and genitive ending are -(e)n, and otherwise is strong.
German weak nouns are all masculine, but not all masculine nouns are weak. Weak nouns mostly are words for humans or animals, but they tend to fall into three major groups:
Those that end in -e:
Those that take Latin and Greek endings like -nt, -aph, -af, -ege, -ist, -aut, or -ekt:
Some other very old German nouns:
Ultimately, though, if you want to know whether a noun is weak, you’ll want to look it up! The rules above can help you guess that a noun might be weak, but they won’t get you all the way there.
German weak nouns are easy to decline: all the forms will end in -(e)n except the nominative singular dictionary form! This is why weak nouns are often called “n-nouns.” You’ll add -en to nouns that end in a consonant and -n to those that end in a vowel.
Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
Nominative | — | -(e)n |
Genitive | -(e)n | -(e)n |
Dative | -(e)n | -(e)n |
Accusative | -(e)n | -(e)n |
A few weak nouns, like Name(name) and Same(seed), will take the ending -(e)ns in the genitive singular. We’ll talk more about these in the section on mixed nouns below!
Here’s an example of the complete declension of the common weak noun Student(student):
Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
Nominative | der Student | die Studenten |
Accusative | den Studenten | die Studenten |
Dative | dem Studenten | den Studenten |
Genitive | des Studenten | der Studenten |
Simple, right?
All true weak nouns are masculine, so neuter and feminine nouns cannot be considered “weak.” However, some neuter and feminine nouns will follow the weak pattern in the plural, taking -(e)n in all their plural forms. Nouns like these are technically considered either strong nouns, though. We’ll discuss those more below!
In German, strong nouns can belong to any gender and have no special identifying features. The best way to identify them is to look them up.In German, strong nouns can belong to any gender and have no special identifying features. The best way to identify them is to look them up.
The names of people are always strong nouns, as are most loan words (with the exception of those that end in the Latin and Greek endings discussed above).
Strong nouns are less regular than weak nouns, but there are some rules to help you decline them. Let’s look first at the singular forms, which are quite regular, and then we’ll talk a bit about the plural forms, which are trickier.
The endings for a singular strong noun will depend on its gender:
Feminine singular strong nouns look the same in every case, with no endings at all!
Case | Singular (Feminine) |
|---|---|
Nominative | die Katze |
Accusative | die Katze |
Dative | der Katze |
Genitive | der Katze |
Masculine and neuter singular strong nouns take only one ending, -(e)s, in the genitive case:
Case | Singular (Masculine) | Singular (Neuter) |
|---|---|---|
Nominative | der Ofen | das Haus |
Accusative | den Ofen | das Haus |
Dative | dem Ofen | dem Haus |
Genitive | des Ofens | des Hauses |
Strong nouns have plural forms that are not entirely predictable and can follow a lot of different patterns. When forming the nominative plural, you might…
add an ending, like -e, -en, -n, -er, -nen, -se, or -s
die Katze → die Katzen
the cat → the cats
add an umlaut to an internal vowel (e.g. a → ä)
der Ofen → die Öfen
the oven → the ovens
add an umlaut and an ending
das Haus → die Häuser
the house → the houses
In our post on forming plural nouns in German, we cover some of the patterns that exist, but ultimately there will be a bit of memorization involved here.
Once you know the nominative plural form, though, the rest of the cases are quite predictable: you’ll just need to add -n to the dative plural!
Case | Plural Nouns | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Nominative | die Häuser houses | die Boote boats | die Katzen cats |
Accusative | die Häuser | die Boote | die Katzen |
Dative | den Häusern | den Booten | den Katzen* |
Genitive | der Häuser | der Boote | der Katzen |
In German, you will hear the term “mixed nouns” used to refer to some exceptional nouns that have features of both strong and weak nouns. This term is applied to a few different types of nouns:
Weak nouns with an -s in the genitive singular:
A classic example of a mixed noun is the noun das Name(name), which is mostly a weak noun, but also acquires the genitive singular -s that is usually associated with strong nouns. Have a look:
Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
Nominative | der Name name | die Namen names |
Accusative | dem Namen | die Namen |
Dative | den Namen | den Namen |
Genitive | des Namens | der Namen |
If you’re learning noun patterns, it can be better to just think of nouns like der Name as weak nouns with an irregular genitive singular form, rather than learning them as another declension class.
Nouns with two possible declensions: one strong, one weak:
Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
Nominative | der Chirurg(surgeon) | die Chirurgen(surgeons) |
Accusative | dem Chirurgen / Chirurg* | die Chirurgen |
Dative | den Chirurgen / Chirurg* | den Chirurgen |
Genitive | des Chirurgen / Chirurgs* | der Chirurgen |
In these cases, one form is generally “standard” while the other is used in casual speech. It’s best to focus your learning on the standard pattern.
Strong nouns with -en plurals:
Is also sometimes applied to strong nouns that just “look like” weak nouns because their plural ends in -(e)n. Two examples might be die Katze(cat) and das Ende(end).
Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
Nominative | das Ende | die Enden |
Accusative | des Endes | den Enden |
Dative | dem Ende | der Enden |
Genitive | das Ende | die Enden |
Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
Nominative | die Katze | die Katzen |
Accusative | der Katze | den Katzen |
Dative | der Katze | der Katzen |
Genitive | die Katze | die Katzen |
While it can help you to remember the forms of nouns like that by thinking of them as “like weak nouns in the plural,” these are still strong nouns, so you can use the strong noun rules for all nouns like this!
Therefore the term “mixed noun” is broadly used for “strongish weak nouns” or “weakish strong nouns,” in German.
Let’s recap what we have learned about German weak, strong, and mixed nouns in this article:
Weak nouns are all masculine and end with -(e)n in every form except the nominative singular.
Strong nouns have unpredictable plural endings, but their case marking follows two main rules:
add -(e)s to the genitive singular
add -n to the dative plural
Mixed nouns have some features of strong nouns and some features of weak ones.
Ready to practice? Check out these exercises to practice using strong vs. weak nouns in German!
