German Plural Rules: The 5 Patterns and How Gender Predicts Them

Updated 5 November 2026 · Wortweg

Put this guide into practice

Most plural charts list the endings and stop there, which leaves you with five options and no way to choose. This guide counts instead. We sorted the 1,842 nouns in Wortweg's A1 to C2 list by how they form the plural, then by gender, so you can see which guess is actually the smart one. 181 of them have no plural in everyday use (der Lärm, die Milch) and 16 exist only in the plural (die Eltern, die Ferien), so the counts below cover the 1,645 that have both forms.

What are the German plural endings?

Two things stand out. First, the definite article in the nominative plural is die, whatever the singular was: der Tag, die Tage. Second, umlauts are not rare decoration. Add up the three umlaut rows and roughly one plural in six changes its vowel.

How does gender predict the plural?

This is the part most charts skip, and it is the useful part.

Feminine (die): add -(e)n, almost always

90% of die-nouns add -n or -en: die Straße → die Straßen, die Wohnung → die Wohnungen, die Zeit → die Zeiten. Female people in -in double the n: die Freundin → die Freundinnen. Most of the rest are loanwords in -s (die Kamera → die Kameras) or the umlaut group below. A feminine noun in our list never adds a plain -e. When it adds -e, the vowel changes too: die Stadt → die Städte, die Hand → die Hände.

Masculine (der): -e, umlaut + -e, or nothing

Masculine nouns split three ways:

• add -e (31%): der Tag → die Tage, der Termin → die Termine
• umlaut + -e (29%): der Arzt → die Ärzte, der Stuhl → die Stühle, der Fuß → die Füße
• no change (21%), mostly nouns in -er, -el, -en: der Lehrer → die Lehrer, der Schlüssel → die Schlüssel

The ending gives you a head start here. A der-noun in -er, -el or -en usually stays the same, sometimes with an umlaut (der Apfel → die Äpfel, der Vogel → die Vögel). A short one-syllable der-noun usually takes -e, and you have to learn whether the umlaut comes with it.

Neuter (das): -e, nothing, or -er

• add -e (38%): das Jahr → die Jahre
• no change (19%): das Fenster → die Fenster, das Mädchen → die Mädchen
• (umlaut +) -er: das Haus → die Häuser, das Wort → die Wörter, das Kind → die Kinder. This pattern is almost entirely neuter: 42 of the 48 umlaut + -er nouns in our list are das.

When does German use -s for the plural?

Mostly for loanwords and words ending in a vowel other than -e: das Auto → die Autos, das Hotel → die Hotels, das Hobby → die Hobbys (not "Hobbies"), der Kaffee → die Kaffees. It feels English, which is why learners overuse it, but it covers only 4% of the nouns with singular and plural forms in this list.

Do umlauts really matter in plurals?

Yes. der Bruder and die Brüder differ only by the umlaut, so the umlaut is the plural. Write it every time, in your notes too: die Füße, never "Fuesse". If your keyboard fights you, see how to type ä, ö, ü and ß.

How to learn German plurals without drilling tables

1. Learn three forms as one unit: article, singular, plural. der Tisch, die Tische. Not "Tisch = table".
2. Use the gender shortcut. For feminine nouns, -(e)n is a useful first guess, but check each word's actual plural.
3. Recall before you look. Say the plural, then check. A wrong guess you correct straight away sticks better than a right answer you only read.
4. Stop early, come back tomorrow. Five plurals a day for a month beats fifty in one evening.

Every word you find in Wortweg shows its article and plural together, with an example sentence, so you practise the full unit without a table.

Questions learners ask

How the vocabulary statistics were counted: corpus counts on this page are computed from Wortweg's own word list (3,306 CEFR-tagged words, 1,842 of them nouns with article and plural), the same list the game draws from. It is a learner's core vocabulary, not the whole German language, so treat the percentages as what you will meet in practice, not as grammar law.