Free German tool
der, die, das: which ending decides it
Guessing an article gives you one right answer in three. Some German endings do better than that, and this course teaches twenty-four of them. Type a noun and see whether one of them fits it, what it predicts, how often that rule holds, and which words break it. When nothing fits, the tool says so instead of inventing a pattern, because that is the honest answer for most nouns.
Whatever you type stays in this tab. A name or a place is yours; nothing here is saved, sent or counted, and closing the tab clears it.
The checker needs JavaScript. All twenty-four rules are written out in full further down this page, with the article each one predicts, its examples and the course words it gets wrong, so you can check any ending by eye.
Step 1 of 3
One German noun. You can write the article in front of it if you know it, and lower case is fine.
The checker holds no dictionary. It reads the ending you give it and tells you what the course's chart says about that ending, which for most nouns is nothing at all.
Which ending?
Twenty-four rules in three groups. Pick one to see what it predicts, how often it is right in this course and what breaks it.
die
der
das
What the chart says
—
The rule
In this course
What breaks it
Two endings fit
Article and plural for
Opens in a new tab on another site. The word goes there only when you open it.
Where to go next
- Learn der, die, das with the noun: the card method for the six nouns in ten that no ending decides.
- The B1 vocabulary list: how the course stores a noun so its article comes back with it.
- The accusative case: what happens to der once the noun is the object of a sentence.
How far the endings really go
Every article-and-endings page you find will show you a list like the one below. Almost none of them tells you how much of German the list covers, so here is the measurement. B1 Atlas ran the chart against all 930 nouns in this course's vocabulary list. One of the endings fits 41% of them. When one fits, it gives the right article 90% of the time. Multiply those and the chart decides the article for about 37% of the nouns in the course.
That is worth having. It is not a system for German gender, and no honest page can sell it as one. Roughly six nouns in ten have nothing in their ending to go on, so the ending is a first check and your vocabulary source is the answer. Use the chart where it applies, and put the time you save into learning the rest of them properly.
The chart, all twenty-four rules
The course sorts the endings into three groups, one per article. The count beside each ending says how many nouns in this course it fires on and how many of those it gets right, so you can see at a glance which rules to trust and which to treat as a hint. An ending with no course noun behind it is marked as untested rather than dressed up.
Endings that predict die
The largest group, and the one you will hit most often. Nine of these endings turn a verb or an adjective into a thing; the last two are the ones to watch.
| Ending | Holds when | In this course | Example | Breaks on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| -ung | always | Right for all 73 nouns that end in -ung in this course. | die Wohnung | — |
| -heit | always | Right for all 7 nouns that end in -heit in this course. | die Gesundheit | — |
| -keit | always | Right for all 5 nouns that end in -keit in this course. | die Möglichkeit | — |
| -schaft | always | Right for all 6 nouns that end in -schaft in this course. | die Mannschaft | — |
| -ion | always | Right for 12 of the 13 nouns that end in -ion in this course. | die Information | das Stadion |
| -tät | always | Right for the one noun that ends in -tät in this course. | die Universität | — |
| -ik | always | Right for 5 of the 7 nouns that end in -ik in this course. | die Musik | der Streik · das Plastik |
| -ur | always | Right for 5 of the 9 nouns that end in -ur in this course. | die Natur | der Flur · der Ingenieur · der Friseur · das Abitur |
| -ei | always | Right for all 3 nouns that end in -ei in this course. | die Bäckerei | — |
| -in | the word names a woman — a job or role with a female holder | Right for all 9 nouns that end in -in in this course. | die Freundin | — |
| -e | always | Right for 153 of the 170 nouns that end in -e in this course. | die Familie | der Name · der Vorname · der Nachname · der Kunde · der Kollege · der Junge · der Auszubildende · der Käse · der Kaffee · der Tee · der See · der Schnee · der Service · das Auge · das Ende · das Wochenende · das Interesse |
Endings that predict der
Two closed lists and a family of endings that all mean the same thing: somebody who does something.
| Ending | Holds when | In this course | Example | Breaks on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| days, months and seasons | always | Right for all 23 nouns in this course. | der Januar | — |
| -er | the word names a person doing something — a job, a role, a family member | Right for 34 of the 37 nouns that end in -er in this course. | der Verkäufer | die Mutter · die Schwester · die Tochter |
| -ling | the word names a person | No course noun tests it. | — | — |
| -or | the word names a person | Right for the one noun that ends in -or in this course. | der Autor | — |
| -ismus | the word names a person or a movement | No course noun tests it. | — | — |
| -ant | the word names a person | Right for the one noun that ends in -ant in this course. | der Praktikant | — |
| -ent | the word names a person | Right for all 2 nouns that end in -ent in this course. | der Student | — |
| -ist | the word names a person | Right for all 2 nouns that end in -ist in this course. | der Tourist | — |
Endings that predict das
Small things, Latin borrowings, and words that gather other words together.
| Ending | Holds when | In this course | Example | Breaks on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| -chen | always | Right for 3 of the 4 nouns that end in -chen in this course. | das Brötchen | der Kuchen |
| -lein | always | No course noun tests it. | — | — |
| -um | always | Right for 10 of the 13 nouns that end in -um in this course. | das Datum | der Raum · der Baum · der Traum |
| -ment | always | Right for all 3 nouns that end in -ment in this course. | das Dokument | — |
| Ge-…-e | the word names a collection of things taken together | Right for the one noun with this shape in this course. | das Gemüse | — |
Two of these rules are about meaning, not spelling
The -er group is the clearest case. This course has ninety-seven nouns ending in -er. The thirty-seven that name a person are der, except for three women in the family: die Mutter, die Schwester, die Tochter. The other sixty go every direction at once — das Wasser, die Butter, das Zimmer, der Computer. So the rule is not "words ending in -er". It is "people who do something". Ask who is doing it, and the ending becomes useful; skip that question and it is noise. -ling, -or, -ismus, -ant, -ent and -ist work the same way: der Student is a person, das Prozent is not.
-in is the female half of the same pattern: der Lehrer becomes die Lehrerin. Words that merely end in those two letters are not covered, which is why der Termin and das Benzin are no argument against it.
The Ge- rule has the same shape. It is das when the word gathers things together, the way das Gemüse gathers vegetables. On the spelling alone it would also catch die Geschichte, die Gemeinde and die Generalprobe, which collect nothing. The chart also names nouns made from a verb's infinitive, such as das Essen. The checker cannot test that one, because it cannot tell an infinitive noun from any other word ending in -en, so it leaves it to you.
When two endings fit
Endings overlap. Dokument ends in -ment and in -ent; Bäckerei ends in -ei and in -e. The chart is an ordered list, not a pile: the days, months and seasons are checked first, then -in, then the die endings, then the das endings, then Ge-, then the person endings, and -e last of all because it is the widest. The longer, more specific ending wins, which is why das Dokument comes out correctly and der September never reaches the -er rule. The checker tells you when a second ending also fitted and which one it used.
The six nouns in ten that no ending decides
Tisch, Buch, Stadt, Hand: nothing in these words points anywhere, and no amount of staring will change that. For those, this course stores the noun as one record — article, singular and plural together, said as one answer from the first review: der Markt · die Märkte. Learning the bare noun now and adding the article later turns one job into two, and the second one never gets done. The guide to learning der, die and das walks through that card method with a short review you can do in seven minutes, and the B1 vocabulary guide shows how the course chooses which nouns are worth the effort.
Where this comes from
The endings are the gender chart from chapter 2 of the B1 Atlas course, reprinted in its appendix. Every example noun, its English meaning, its chapter and the phrase underneath it are taken from the course's own vocabulary list, so what you see here is what you would meet in the book. The coverage figures come from running the chart against that same 930-noun list; the book prints the same numbers and does not round them up.
What this tool is not
It is not a dictionary. It holds no list of German nouns beyond the examples and exceptions printed on this page, so it cannot tell you the article of a word — only what the ending predicts, which is a different claim and sometimes a wrong one. Check the article in your vocabulary source before you learn it. The tool also stops at the article: it says nothing about plurals, and nothing about what happens to der when the noun becomes the object of a sentence. For that, read the accusative case, where der is the only article that changes. If you are working through the beginning of German, the numbers, dates and times trainer covers the other thing you will need on your first day, and the first-conversation guide gives you somewhere to use both.