German · Der, die, das, plurals, compoundsHow to learn
German vocabulary

The short answer

• A noun is three things: the article, the word and the plural, learned together from the first day (der Tag, die Tage).
• Let compounds and patterns work for you: a long noun takes its gender from its last part, and a verb comes with its preposition and case.
• Review on a schedule: a few words a day, seen again after 1, 3, 7 and 21 days, beat long lists read once.

What makes German words hard

Six things decide how a German word should go into your notebook.

Der, die or das: learn the article with the noun

Every German noun is masculine (der), feminine (die) or neuter (das), and the gender often has nothing to do with the thing: der Löffel (spoon), die Gabel (fork) and das Messer (knife) are one of each. Some endings are reliable: nouns in -ung⁠, -heit⁠, -keit⁠, -schaft and -tion are feminine (die Zeitung⁠, die Freiheit⁠, die Nation); the small-making endings -chen and -lein are neuter, which is why it is das Mädchen⁠, a girl. For most nouns there is no rule to lean on, so the article is part of the word. A few nouns even change meaning with it: der See is a lake and die See the sea (DWDS, Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache).

The plural belongs to the word too

German plurals follow several patterns, and the singular rarely tells you which: der Tag, die Tage; das Buch, die Bücher; die Frau, die Frauen; das Auto, die Autos; der Lehrer, die Lehrer (no change); der Apfel, die Äpfel (only the vowel changes). Learners’ dictionaries often write it in short, as der Tag, -e⁠. The plural article is always die⁠, so die Löffel can mean the spoons, and die alone does not tell you a noun is feminine. Learn the plural when you learn the noun; it is much harder to add later.

Nouns have capital letters, and compounds give you words for free

German writes every noun with a capital letter (Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung, Amtliches Regelwerk 2024, § 55), so in a sentence you can spot the nouns at a glance. Long nouns are built from short ones, and the last part decides the gender and the plural: das Haus + die Tür is die Haustür (front door); die Hand + der Schuh is der Handschuh⁠, a glove. Sometimes a joining letter appears, as in das Arbeitszimmer (study). When you meet a compound, split it: if you know the parts, it costs almost no reviews, and its gender is already known.

Separable verbs split in the sentence

Many verbs have a prefix that moves to the end of the clause: anfangen (to begin) becomes Der Kurs fängt um acht an⁠, and aufstehen becomes Ich stehe früh auf⁠. The words you see, fängt … an⁠, are not the word you look up, so save the full verb, anfangen⁠, and keep the sentence that shows the split. Prefixes such as be-⁠, ver-⁠, ent- and er- never separate: verstehen stays ich verstehe (DWDS).

Cases live inside word patterns

Many verbs and adjectives take a fixed preposition and case, and that pattern is the thing to learn: auf jemanden warten (to wait for someone, accusative), jemandem helfen (to help someone, dative), sich an etwas erinnern (to remember something), Angst vor etwas haben (to be afraid of something, dative). Save the pattern as one entry, with jemanden⁠, jemandem or etwas in it, and the case in the usage note. You learn the grammar a word at a time, in the form you will use.

False friends for English speakers

German and English share many words, and a few look the same and mean something else. Gift means poison; bekommen means to get, not to become (that is werden); a Handy is a mobile phone; eventuell means possibly, not eventually; and aktuell means current (DWDS). Give each its own card and write the English meaning you expected in the usage note, so the right one wins when the card comes back.

What to put on each card

A German card needs the article and the plural, which an English card does not. Here is the layout, using the fields of a Lexpad card; the same works on paper or in any flashcard app.

Where to find your words

• News in easy or slow German, such as Deutsche Welle’s slowly spoken news or Deutschlandfunk’s nachrichtenleicht: short texts, a few new words each.
• Graded readers and books at your level. On a Kindle, the words you look up are kept in Vocabulary Builder, and they can come into your notebook later.
• Series and YouTube videos with German subtitles, so you can see a word you heard. Pause and save the line.
• Your course or class: the words your teacher uses again are the ones you will need.

There are official lists: the Goethe-Institut publishes the word lists for its A1, A2 and B1 exams (Goethe-Institut, Start Deutsch 1 word list). Use them to check what you have, not as a deck to learn from the top; the words you met in your own reading stay better. To pick words from a German text, paste it into the free text to flashcards tool and tap the ones you don’t know.

What to look for in a German vocabulary app

Most German vocabulary apps come with a list of words to work through. Whatever you use, check four things:

• The article and plural stay with the noun, as you typed them.
• Your own words, from what you read and hear, with the sentence you met them in.
• Reviews at growing gaps, so the words you know come back less and the ones you miss come back sooner.
• Audio in a German voice, to hear what you read.

If you want a set list for an exam, the Goethe-Institut has its own vocabulary trainer for A1 to B1. For a comparison of apps for your own words, see vocabulary apps and Anki alternatives.

How many German words a day

Most learners keep 10 to 15 new words a day going; the reviews they bring are the real cost. A noun with its article and plural counts as one word, and is worth the extra seconds. Try your own numbers in the spaced repetition calculator, and see roughly how many words each level is estimated to need in CEFR levels for vocabulary. The method itself, step by step: How to memorize vocabulary.

How Lexpad helps with German