A Beginners' Guide To German Plurals

If you’ve been learning German for a while, you’ve probably figured out that there seems to be a tricky rule for every little thing.

No matter if you’re trying to master the German dative or get to grips with German verbs, there will be not just rules to learn, but also a list of exceptions.

You’ll be happy to know that German plurals are no different; in fact, there are so many subcategories that you could say there are almost no rules, only exceptions to them.

This makes them challenging to learn, but hopefully we can give you some pointers to get you started.

How German plurals work

The idea behind German plurals is no different than any other Indo-European languages, if you have one of something, the noun gets a singular form.

If there are two or more, the noun changes to become plural.

It’s not like Chinese, where the noun is always the same, or Arabic, which has a plural for two and one for three or more.

It’s not just the overarching thought that’s the same as in English, either.

German plurals actually have a lot in common with English.

In English, most plurals are formed by adding -s to a noun (or at least a variation of that); German does something similar, there are just more variations.

Sometimes in both English and German, a noun will change within the word to denote there’s two of it, like how one mouse becomes two mice, or one goose becomes two geese.

In rare cases, an English word won’t change at all, like one or two fish; German has words like that, too.

That said, though, as with all things German, there’s a multitude of small, detailed rules that need to be followed, so overall there’s a lot more to learn than in English.

German plurals and articles

One thing about German plurals is that the articles stay the same across all genders, they only change per case.

So regardless of the form or type of the plural, you don’t need to worry about the article.

We’ve gone over them once before in our guide to German cases, but here they are again.

However, the nouns themselves are all over the place, let’s go over them, gender by gender.

Masculine plurals

In German, many masculine nouns simply add the letter “e” to the end of the word to denote the plural.

This affects all nouns that end with any of five endings.

These last two groups are quite rare, you won’t see them much.

These words are almost always on loan from French and, as German prefers to avoid that, there’s not too many of them.

Next up are the masculine nouns ending in -el or -er. These are annoying because this one group is actually two groups.

If the word already has an umlaut in it (those nifty double dots over a vowel), then it gets no ending at all.

Usually if it doesn’t have an umlaut, then it gets one (though there are exceptions to this), but still no ending.

Note that on paper Kumpel means miner, but it’s generally used as “buddy” or, if you’re British or Australian, “mate.”

Another group is a bit of a catch-all for words that don’t fit into any other group, but generally end with a vowel.

These get an umlaut and -e.

There’s also a group that gets an umlaut and -er, usually words that end with a double consonant.

This group is small, but many common words are in it.

Masculine nouns with plural -n or -en

With the first few common groups out of the way, let’s take a look at one big grab bag, the nouns that have plurals ending in -n (when sending with just e) or -en (when ending with a consonant).

There are some nasty exceptions to these, though.

One very common one is the word for “cheese,” der K"ase, which doesn’t change at all, so die K"ase.

Another are a very small group of nouns that don’t fit into any group, but still get -en.

Other groups and exceptions

The last group are words that end in -us, which again fall into two groups.

The first group gets -usse as the ending, while the second has it replaced with -i.

The second group are generally words with Latin roots.

Other than these groups, there are some odd wild cards: a very small group of masculine nouns gets -ten at the end, and a few words get -er but no umlaut.

However, these are so rare, it’s best to forget about them until you run into them.

Feminine plurals

You’ll be happy to know that with the masculine nouns out of the way, the worst is behind us. The feminine and neuter nouns are a lot more straightforward.

The vast majority of feminine nouns in German end in -e in the singular.

The plural is then formed by simply adding -n.

If a feminine noun ends in something else than -e, it usually gets either -en or -nen, depending on a few things.

Here’s what that looks like in a table.

There are a number of exceptions to these rules, most of which we’ll just summarize at the end of this section as they’re quite rare.

That said, there are a few important ones, like “mother” and “daughter,” which get an umlaut and nothing else.

Another, almost as small group, gets an -e at the end as well as an umlaut.

These include feminine nouns ending in -aus as well as those with a in the word.

All others fit handily in a single table, though.

Neuter plurals

Two down, one to go: the neuter nouns’ plural is generally quite simple.

However, there are two things to look out for, one is that there’s some overlap between the neuter and other two genders when it comes to endings.

The other is that some of the exceptions, while rare, are pretty weird.

Like how das Auto becomes die Autos, despite no other neuter word doing that.

However, the majority of neuter nouns simply get -e in the plural, and that’s it.

However, there’s another group that sees no change in the plural, these are always the same three endings.

Make sure to check the article on words like this, though, it’s more likely that words with these endings are masculine rather than neuter!

Another set that doesn’t change are diminutives ending in -chen.

There is also a common group that gets -er in the plural; when there’s an a in the word it gets umlaut, too.

One final group is very small, but there are some common words in there.

They end in -en or -ien.

Lastly, there’s just all the weird stuff.

Most of these are loan words and thus behave a little strangely.

The exceptions are the words ending in -nis, which behave just like feminine nouns, but are neuter.

Words without plurals

I know all that’s a lot.

Thankfully, there are also a number of nouns that don’t have a plural, these generally fall apart in two categories.

Names of people (der Simon), cities (die Berlin) and countries (das Frankreich) don’t generally have a plural form, so no need to worry about that.

One of the very few exceptions is the United States, which is die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, but then again, that doesn’t have a singular!

The same goes for concepts like anger (die Wut) and so on.

A small reprieve, at least.

Tips for learning German plurals

As you can see, there are a lot of things to remember here.

As a general tip, I recommend that you learn the plural for every noun along with the singular, it just makes things easier.

For example, instead of just studying that “house” is Haus, write it in your own vocabulary list as Haus/H"auser.

That ought to save you a lot of headache down the road.

Better yet, though, is to add the article to it, as well, so you can immediately learn the gender, too, so make it: das Haus/H"auser.

It’s more work, I know, but study this way and your German will be really good before you know it. Best of luck!