German: any tips for learning gender?

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German: any tips for learning gender?

Postby CarlyD » Tue Sep 18, 2018 8:29 pm

I have a cheatsheet for all the common gender rules for German nouns. But there's like a million exceptions it seems like.

Right now, when I do Memrise, 80% of my errors turn out to be having typed in the wrong gender. I know solution #1 is "just memorize them" but does anyone have any tips or help they could share?
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Re: German: any tips for learning gender?

Postby AlOlaf » Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:25 pm

This excellent book is mainly about expanding vocabulary, but it also shows how to identify the gender of large groups of nouns by suffix. You said you already had a cheat sheet, though, so this information may not be new to you.

For the many nouns that give no clue as to their gender, I've found it helpful to learn them together with the definite article.
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Re: German: any tips for learning gender?

Postby CarlyD » Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:45 pm

Thank you. That book looked interesting and I ordered a used copy from Amazon--hopefully it will help a bit.
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Re: German: any tips for learning gender?

Postby Sizen » Wed Sep 19, 2018 2:20 am

I don't know if this helps, but for me it was a question of changing my attitude towards gender. I try to think of gender as an intrisic part of knowing a word, not dissimilar to tones in a tonal language, or stress accent in something like Russian, English or Spanish. Associating a word with the wrong gender will not usually cause a great deal of confusion, at least not as much as the wrong tone in a tonal language, but I find it helpful to give the same weight to gender as any of those other things.

My goal when studying is to make checking and learning the gender of a word as essential as learning the word in the first place. If I come across a new word, I'll make sure I note the gender either through context, or if that's not possible, by looking it up. When I'm thinking of words or self-talking, if I don't know the gender of a word, I take the time to look it up and take note of it. If I'm having a conversation and I realise I've forgotten the gender of a word, I'll confirm it with the person I'm speaking with or take note of it and check it later. The point is, I constantly look up the gender, even if I know the word. With time, this became a natural habit, and now, it's something I rarely think of.

It sucks when you're first developping this habit, I know. Especially if you already know a bunch of words and would rather keep moving forward rather than going back and relearning the gender of a bunch of words, but it does get easier. Something I've been struggling with lately that's somewhat parallel to this topic is pitch accent in Japanese, something I didn't know existed for a long time and then ignored for a few years once I had learned about it. It was frustrating to have to go back and learn that I'd been mispronouncing thousands of words, and that now I'd have to associate each individual word I came across (including the words I already knew) with a number denoting the placement of an accent I could barely hear. But now, I've fixed my pronunciation for thousands of words and I'm starting to get to the point where I'll notice the correct accent of words without specifically paying attention to pronuncation. I'll just be listening to something and think, "Oh, look at that. That word's a 3. Cool." It's still a work in progress, but I know that because I have the habit, it'll eventually iron itself out.

Hopefully there's something here you find helpful.
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Re: German: any tips for learning gender?

Postby lowsocks » Wed Sep 19, 2018 2:23 am

First, I should say that although I have been studying German on my own for quite a while, I have not been very successful so far. So keep that in mind when you weigh my advice :)

In addition to clues given by endings, there are two other main techniques for learning gender that I am aware of:

1) Mnemonics. This is somewhat controversial, as some people feel that mnemonic devices are too distracting, and interfere with developing a direct association between a word and its meaning. But to take an example: Suppose you are trying to learn nouns of neuter gender ("das" nouns). Take a noun in this class that is vivid and easy to visualize, e.g., "das Feuer" (the fire). Now associate other neuter nouns with das Feuer. For example, das Pferd (the horse) is neuter, so imagine a horse leaping through flames, or a horse on fire running around. (Okay, that last one is rather unpleasant. But the idea is to make things vivid.) Or take das Bett (the bed), also neuter, and imagine your bed, or a big poster bed, on fire. Likewise, das Messer (the knife), could have knives on fire, or have knives put into a fire until they are red hot. Or you could even combine some of the nouns into a single image - e.g., a horse lying in bed, with a knife through its heart, with the whole scene on fire. Well, this imagery is getting rather violent, and maybe you can think of something more peaceful. But you get the idea.

The objection many have, though, is that this imagery will intrude where it doesn't belong. Say you're reading a story, and a horse appears. Part of your mind will picture it as being on fire, even though this has nothing to do with the story. But it is a technique you can try. Some advocates claim that the strange imagery is only temporary, like a sort of scaffolding, and will be largely forgotten as your mind gets used to the gender. But you'll have to try it for yourself, and decide if it is worthwhile.


2) As AlOlaf suggested, learn the noun along with its definite article. This is a very old piece of advice, and a very good one, I think, and I would like to say a bit more about it. Essentially the idea is to never, ever, say or write the word without a corresponding article. Thus for "bed", always say "das Bett", never just the word for bed alone. (Well, I suppose if you are declining the adjective it would be something other than das, but that's a different story.)

Now you might feel this is circular. How are you to know which article to use, if don't know the gender? Well, if necessary, carry a list of words, with their articles, with you, and consult it if necessary. But again: Never say the word, even to yourself, silently, without its article. Eventually, and you have to trust us on this, you will start to think of bed as "das Bett", rather than the form without the article. (Which you can see, I am careful to avoid doing. It is always "das Bett".)

Back when I studied high school French, I and most of my other classmates failed to do this. We would instead just learn the nouns, and worry about learning the genders separately. And of course, we failed miserably at knowing the genders properly, even for the most basic and common words in our textbook. (I would do many things differently if I were back in high school. But that is water under the bridge now.)

Again, you should take this advice with a large grain of salt. If I were use only one of these two methods, I would go with the second. It is, after all, trying to establish a direct connection between noun and gender. It also tries to approximate what occurs for a native speaker, who is always hearing and using the noun with its gender-indicating articles. But I would be interested in hearing what advice more successful learners have to give.

EDIT: And I see that Sizen has also given basically the same advice as in my 2) above :)
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Re: German: any tips for learning gender?

Postby patrickwilken » Wed Sep 19, 2018 11:28 am

That old bugbear. :D

I the basic advice is right: Don't consider the gender as independent of the word, but as something intrinsic. So when you are learning words via Anki (you are doing that right?) just make sure that you always learn the gender with it, and learn something like "Der Hund" not "Hund (masc)" which is too far removed from the language. After a while you'll be able to guess a lot of the genders pretty easily, but I think it's just worth trying to systematically memorize genders as you go.

The other thing is that you just need to expose yourself to lots of examples of the language. After reading lots I speak German OK, people say I get the gender most of the time, and in the end I can communicate fine.

Good luck!
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Re: German: any tips for learning gender?

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Sep 19, 2018 12:23 pm

patrickwilken wrote:Learn something like "Der Hund" not "Hund (masc)" which is too far removed from the language. After a while you'll be able to guess a lot of the genders pretty easily, but I think it's just worth trying to systematically memorize genders as you go.


I found that learning "der" as the masculine marker screwed me up with dative and accusative, later. I think I prefer (m) hund and (f) katze now...

"Der Hund jagte die Katze des Künstlers."
"Er aß den Hund nach der Katze."
"Weder der Hund noch die Katze überlebten."

*sorry about the state of the cat and dog in this post. Life is harsh. But visual examples like these help with memory.
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Re: German: any tips for learning gender?

Postby patrickwilken » Wed Sep 19, 2018 12:39 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
patrickwilken wrote:Learn something like "Der Hund" not "Hund (masc)" which is too far removed from the language. After a while you'll be able to guess a lot of the genders pretty easily, but I think it's just worth trying to systematically memorize genders as you go.


I found that learning "der" as the masculine marker screwed me up with dative and accusative, later. I think I prefer (m) hund and (f) katze now...

"Der Hund jagte die Katze des Künstlers."
"Er aß den Hund nach der Katze."
"Weder der Hund noch die Katze überlebten."

*sorry about the state of the cat and dog in this post. Life is harsh. But visual examples like these help with memory.


That's a good point. Personally I don't like "Hund m" as it just seems unnatural, but I completely get your point.
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Re: German: any tips for learning gender?

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Sep 19, 2018 12:56 pm

patrickwilken wrote:That's a good point. Personally I don't like "Hund m" as it just seems unnatural, but I completely get your point.


Yeah, I don't have an ideal solution for this.
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Re: German: any tips for learning gender?

Postby patrickwilken » Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:20 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
patrickwilken wrote:That's a good point. Personally I don't like "Hund m" as it just seems unnatural, but I completely get your point.


Yeah, I don't have an ideal solution for this.


For me in the end I just just incorporated the accusative form as the gender of the word, but I get why it can cause confusion.

Spanish is much easier. :D
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