Der, die or das? The ending usually tells you

Every German noun comes with one of three articles, and nothing about the thing itself tells you which. A girl is das Mädchen, a spoon is der Löffel, a fork is die Gabel. That's the part of German most English speakers hate first.

The good news is that the ending of a noun often carries the answer. Not always, but often enough that learning two dozen endings beats learning thousands of articles one at a time.

How the checker decides

It tries four things in order and tells you which one answered.

Checked. About 230 common nouns whose article I looked up before typing it in: der Tisch, die Stadt, das Auto. The irregular ones are in here on purpose, der Käse and das Ende among them, so the rules below never get the chance to be wrong about them.

A strong ending. An ending that decides the gender for nearly every noun that has it. A strong ending wins even over a known noun inside the word: die Freundschaft is feminine because of -schaft, though der Freund is masculine.

A compound. German stacks nouns, and the last one decides. Der Kühlschrank takes its der from der Schrank, das Krankenhaus its das from das Haus. The checker looks for a noun it knows at the end of the word.

A weak ending. An ending that leans one way and has real exceptions. Those rows say "a lean, not a rule".

The endings that settle it

One more that is less about the ending than the grammar: a verb used as a noun is always neuter. Essen is to eat, and das Essen is the meal. Leben is to live, and das Leben is life.

The endings that only lean

These are where most German nouns live, and they are honest tendencies rather than rules.

-e leans feminine. About nine nouns in ten that end in -e take die: die Lampe, die Tasche, die Straße. The tenth is the trap. Der Name, der Junge and der Käse are masculine, and das Ende and das Auge are neuter.

-er leans masculine, above all for a person or a tool: der Lehrer, der Computer. But die Mutter, die Butter and das Fenster are common enough that you will say one wrong in your first week.

-en leans masculine (der Garten, der Wagen) unless the word is a verb used as a noun, which is neuter.

What this does not tell you

The case. The checker gives the article as a dictionary prints it, in the nominative. Der becomes den, dem or des depending on the noun's job in the sentence, and that is a separate thing to learn.

The plural. Every plural takes die, whatever the singular was, and the plural ending is its own small puzzle.

Nouns it has never seen. When no rule fits and no known noun sits at the end of the word, it says so rather than guessing. Look it up, then learn it with its article, out loud, as one unit.

If you would rather see which English words you already know in German, the cognate checker covers German now, and the German word patterns page lists the endings English gave you for free.

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