2.4 Plurals — the five patterns — Epoché
What you will be able to do Form the plural of a German noun using the five patterns — die Tische , die Schulen , die Wörter , die Hotels , die Zimmer — and say which is likely for a noun of a given gender and shape. Say which patterns add the two dots over the stem vowel — die Nächte , die Gärten — and which never do. Read the compressed notation a dictionary uses, so that der Apfel followed by two dots and a dash tells you the plural without spelling it out. Recognise that die is the plural article for all three genders, so that the plural is the one place in German where gender stops mattering. Prerequisites : 2.3 — you need the three genders and the articles, because four of the five plural patterns correlate with gender and the notation you are about to read assumes you know it. See 2.3 Grammar if the endings that predict gender are not yet in your head. English has one plural. It adds a hiss to the end of the word, spells it -s or -es , and applies it to everything except about a dozen survivors — children , men , feet , teeth , geese , mice , sheep . German has five plurals and uses all of them, and the dozen English survivors are the clue to why: every one of them is a German pattern that English happened to keep. That is the frame for this lesson. You are not learning a foreign system. You are learning the full version of a system you have fragments of. Children is the German pattern that adds a syllable. Men and feet and geese are the German pattern that changes the vowel. Sheep is the German pattern that adds nothing at all. The English irregulars are not irregular; they are the last speakers of a set of rules that German still uses for thousands of words. The five patterns Each of the five is a suffix — or the absence of one — and three of the five may also change the stem vowel by adding two dots. The vowel change is a separate piece of machinery from the suffix, and it is worth keeping them apart in your mind: the suffix tells you the pattern, and the dots are an extra that some words in some patterns take. Pattern one adds -e . This is the commonest pattern for masculine nouns of one syllable, and it takes the dots often. Four vowels can take the dots — a , o , u and au . Whether a given noun takes them is a fact about the word: Hund , Tag and Jahr could, and do not. Ten words, the first five without the change and the last five with it. Singular Plural der Hund — dog die Hunde der Tisch — table die Tische der Tag — day die Tage der Brief — letter die Briefe das Jahr — year die Jahre der Baum — tree die Bäume der Stuhl — chair die Stühle die Hand — hand die Hände die Stadt — city die Städte die Nacht — night die Nächte The last three are feminine nouns of one syllable, and they are a small closed group that all take this pattern with the dots. There are about thirty of them and they are frequent, so they are worth noticing as a set rather than as exceptions. Pattern two adds -er . This is a neuter pattern above all, and it almost always takes the dots when the vowel can carry them. Singular Plural das Kind — child die Kinder das Bild — picture die Bilder das Ei — egg die Eier das Lied — song die Lieder das Buch — book die Bücher das Haus — house die Häuser das Land — country die Länder das Wort — word die Wörter das Glas — glass die Gläser der Mann — man die Männer The first word in that table forms its plural the way English children once did (Old English cildru ), though Kind and child are different words. The last is the cognate of man , with the vowel change of men visible. Pattern three adds -en , or just -n after -e , -el or -er ( die Blumen , die Kartoffeln ). Note that die Frau ends in a vowel sound and still takes the full -en . This is the feminine pattern, and it is the largest of the five by number of words, because the feminine class is the largest. It does not take the dots. Singular Plural die Frau — woman die Frauen die Uhr — clock die Uhren die Tür — door die Türen die Zeitung — newspaper die Zeitungen das Bett — bed die Betten die Blume — flower die Blumen die Katze — cat die Katzen die Lampe — lamp die Lampen die Schule — school die Schulen der Junge — boy die Jungen The bottom five already end in -e , the ending that the previous lesson used to predict the feminine gender, so they add only the single consonant. The last of them is the masculine exception you met in that lesson, declining like a feminine noun in the plural as well. Pattern four adds -s . This is the newest pattern in the language and it is used mostly for words borrowed in the last few centuries, mostly from English and French, and for short words like die Omas . It never takes the dots. Practically, this is the pattern for any noun that already looks international. Singular Plural das Auto — car die Autos das Foto — photo die Fotos das Kino — cinema die Kinos das Sofa — sofa die Sofas das Hotel — hotel die Hotels das Baby — baby die Babys das Handy — mobile phone die Handys das Team — team die Teams der Park — park die Parks das Restaurant — restaurant die Restaurants Two notes on the spelling. German does not use an apostrophe before the plural ending, so the words for babies and mobile phones simply take the letter after the y . And the seventh word is the false friend you met in the cognates volume: it is not an adjective, it means a mobile phone, and no English speaker guesses it. Pattern five adds nothing. The plural is spelled exactly like the singular, and only the article tells you which you have. This is the pattern for most masculine and neuter nouns that already end in -er , -en , -el or the diminutive suffix. Some of them take the dots, which is then the only visible difference. Two feminine family words, die Mutter and die Tochter , also take this pattern with the dots. Singular Plural das Fenster — window die Fenster das Zimmer — room die Zimmer das Messer — knife die Messer der Lehrer — teacher die Lehrer der Wagen — car, wagon die Wagen das Mädchen — girl die Mädchen der