German · Chapter 9 · Lesson 3 · Grammar primer

Word building

Prescribed by the AQA specification.

The short version

-chen and -lein make a noun neuter, always

Katze is feminine, but attach the little/endearing suffix -chen and das Kätzchen becomes neuter regardless. The same happens with -lein. Whatever gender the base noun had, the diminutive suffix overrides it every time, no exceptions.

die Katze, das Kätzchen

the cat, the kitten

-heit and -keit nouns are always feminine

Turn an adjective into an abstract noun with -heit or -keit and you always get a feminine noun back, whichever adjective you started from. Krankheit, Freiheit and Möglichkeit all follow the same rule, which makes the gender the one part of this pattern you never have to guess.

die Krankheit, die Möglichkeit

the illness, the possibility

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

Read the full article · 8 min read

Practice

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10-question session

One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 18 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.

Lesson 3 of 17 in this chapter

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