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Der, die oder das; one of  the hardest and most daunting topics for German language students. Why is the television masculine, the wall feminine and the window neuter? How come that objects have a gender at all?
Although a challenge, mastering German noun gender is important to the learning of German.
Without knowing the gender of every noun you use, you can't use it correctly. You can't inflect it in different cases (there are four of them German). You can't even point at things to talk about them. For example, the utterance "This is a table. It's old" translates as "Das ist ein Tisch. Er ist alt." Literally, you refer to the table as he. You need to know that the German word for a table – der Tisch – is masculine.
So, if you mix up your genders, you will be understood – but your German will sound far from fluent... or even remotely correct. And you DO want to speak German well, otherwise you wouldn't be learning it, or reading this hub in the first place?
Drop your presuppositions!
If you already speak a language with noun gender, like Spanish, Greek or Czech, well - there's good news and bad news for you. The good news is that you understand the very concept of gender, so you probably just skimmed over my introduction. You're already used to nouns having genders!
Here's where the bad news comes. Regardless if you want it or not, you'll be carrying over presuppositions from your native language to your German studies. If you're a Spanish speaker, you're so used to the word for a spoon - la cuchara - to be feminine that you might have a hard time remembering that a German spoon is masculine: der Loeffel. There's a huge risk you'll end up referring to your native language all the time, which is never good for successful language learning.
The solution? Forget your native language and drop the gender presuppositions. Approach every new German noun without referring to your native language, or any other language you know. E
Since knowing the gender of every noun you use is so important, the best thing you can do is learn new words together with an appropriate definite article: der, die or das. Suppose you look up the German word for "key" in a dictionary; a typical entry would look like this:
key - Schluessel, m.
It's easy to ignore the gender part and only learn the actual noun - "key - Schluessel." But that's exactly what you're not supposed to do. You're supposed to read it as "DER Schluessel," and it's this form that you have to write down (if you have a vocabulary notebook) or repeat several times. When reviewing your vocabulary, if you can only recall the noun, but not its gender, it means that you haven't learned it and that you have to work a bit harder.
Ignoring the gender is like learning only half a word. Would you recommend an English learner to only learn halves of words? Of course not - there's no way anyone could speak comprehensible English with the words cut in half! Similarly, you won't be able to build grammatically correct German sentences. So - get attached to the gender, and attach it to every word you learn!
Many German learners use visualizing techniques to remember the gender of nouns. It's best, of course, if you invent your own techniques – I guarantee you, they'll stick much better this way. Here's some inspiration for you.
- color coding
Some learners assign certain colors to certain genders. For example, the masculine gender is blue, the feminine gender pink, and the neuter gender green. Think of the word for ballpoint pen – der Kugelschreiber – and imagine a blue pen. Focus on this picture for a few seconds, making sure it sticks.
- associations
Think of the ballpoint pen again. Is there anything in it that help you remember it's masculine? Well, it's long and hard and pointed... You get the picture. That's a simple example, and I'm sure you can think of plenty of more for new words – the weirder, the better.
You'll soon discover that visualizing has two big disadvantages. First of all, it might be too time-consuming when you have to create mental images for many words at once. Secondly, it works best for simple, concrete nouns – it's easy to visualize a pen or a cat, but what about abstract nouns, like "patience" or "bias"?
Despite these shortcomings, visualization is a wonderful method to try if you're a total beginner, learning your first German words. These are usually concrete nouns, and you might not be so used to the idea of gender in the first place, so you'll need a method that's imaginative and simple at the same time. Even if you're an advanced learner, you can use visualization to remember the gender of those pesky words you always forget. You know what I mean. Everyone has such words, even advanced learners.
Der Artikel tritt auf einer verhaeltnismaessig spaeten Entwicklungsstufe der Sprache auf; er hat erst in der mittelhochdeutschen Periode (12.–14. Jh.) endgueltig Fuss gefasst. Der bestimmte Artikel hat sich aus dem sogenannten anaphorischen (rueckweisenden) Pronomen entwickelt, d. h. einem Pronomen, das sich auf das obenerwaehnte Satzglied (Substantiv) bezog und das seinem Ursprung nach mit dem Demonstrativpronomen aufs engste verbunden ist. Der unbestimmte Artikel ist aus dem Zahlwort ein entstanden; aus der Bedeutung ein hat sich die Bedeutung irgendein, ein gewisser entwickelt und daraus der unbestimmte Artikel. Der unbestimmte Artikel hat keinen Plural: dem unbestimmten Artikel ein im Singular entspricht sinngemaess Artikellosigkeit im Plural.Der Artikel bezeichnet die grammatischen Merkmale des Substantivs und gibt die Bedeutung der Bestimmtheit oder Unbestimmtheit an, die das Substantiv im Satz erhaelt.Als Begleiter des Substantivs drueckt der Artikel die dem Substantiv eigenen grammatischen Kategorien, aus: das grammatische Geschlecht, die Zahl, den Kasus.
