German A1 Articles | Definite and Indefinite

Next in our Learn German A1 course, we will tackle definite and indefinite articles more clearly. Articles are important when learning the German grammar. 

Articles are the words that come before a noun. There are two different types of articles in German: definite and indefinite articles. 

The first type is called bestimmte Artikel (definite articles). We use these to identify a particular thing or person we already know. Definite articles should have the correct gender (male, female, neutral) and number (singular/plural) of the noun they precede.

Masculine: der Mann (the man)

Feminine: die Frau (the woman)

Neuter: das Mädchen (the girl)

Plural: die Frauen (the women- plural)

You'll learn the gender of specific nouns as your German progresses, but for now you can rely on the article to indicate whether a word is masculine, feminine or neuter.

Tip: Articles change depending on the case. Try to memorise the article of each new word you learn! It will become more important the further you are into grammar learning. My mistake when I started to learn German was that I memorized nouns without the gender of the article, so when I started learning grammar, I always made mistakes because I didn't know the gender of the noun.

Remember: We always capitalize nouns, even in the middle of the sentence.

Woher kommt die Frau?

Die Freundin kommt aus Deutschland.

When we refer to a group of items or people (plural) the article of the noun changes to "die", no matter what the noun’s gender is.

Tip: From research, I learned that most words with certain endings have specific definite articles. 

Der: -ig, -ling, -or, -ismus, -er

Das: -tum, -chen, -ma, -um, -lein, -nis

Die: -heit, -ung, -keit, -ei, -schaft

Can you identify the definite articles of these words:

Mädchen, Rentner, Zeitung, Sauberkeit, and Zentrum.

The second type of German article is the unbestimmte Artikel (indefinite articles). We use these to refer to an item or person we don't need to specify further.

Just like definite articles, indefinite articles agree in gender and number with the noun they come after. These are the indefinite articles: 

Masculine: ein Mann (a man)

Feminine: eine Frau (a woman)

Neuter: ein Mädchen (a girl)

Indefinite articles also change depending on the case.

We do not use any indefinite articles for nouns in the plural form!

In meiner Mannschaft sind Jungen und Mädchen. (There are boys and girls in my team.)

Hast du Kollegen? (Do you have any colleagues?)

Tip: Learn the plural forms of the nouns too. Some are simple and just change the article, for example: das Mädchen to die Mädchen. But some need to add –s, –e, -en but some could change some vowels to become umlauts (der Vater to die Väter).

In the next lesson, we are going to learn how to say the name of different countries and languages in German.

To go back to the lessons list, click here.