Plurals in German

Hi all,

We have been dealing with several things: Vocabulary, articles corresponding to the names, declensions, etc.. In German, plurals are not as simple as in English. It is not as simple as addin an s. There are a few plural endings, and we must know which one goes with each word.  This seems simple but it is very easy to get confused. I believe that eventually, one should remember the plural form by just hearing it repeatedly, however, it is nice to have an aid to memorize the names together with their the plurals. I have separated all these categories in 6 plural endings.

The way to do this would be the following. We will create 6 objects or figures. We will place this figures in the same location and story where we have the name. Therefore, we will be able to remember in one go, the meaning of the nouns, the gender and also its plural.

Ending	Association	Example
-n	Nail polish	die Lampe – die Lampen
-en	Default plural	der Student – die Studenten die Chefin-die Chefin(n)en
-e	Eagle	der Friseur – die Friseure die Hand – die Hände
-er	Hedghog (Erizo in Spanish)	der Leib - die Leiber das Wort – die Wörter
-s	Salami	die Opa – die Opas
No plural ending	Sbd/Smth disappearing!	der Löffel – die Löffel

You can see that some of the endings have also umlaut (¨). [die Hand – die Hände] We could assign another state for the umlaut. Say for instance, if there is rain (isn´t umlaut similar to raindrops?), and everything is wet, then we know that that word also needs umlaut.

Example:

Say that we want to remember the word book, "Buch". The plural books is "Bücher". Now, the word is quite similar so we won´t associate anything with the meaning, just imagine a set of books. These books are shaped like a house for a small cute hedgehog. The books are very wet since it is raining. We now have to imagine a horrible storm, and the poor animal trying to survive. The more intense we make the story, the better we are going to remember it.

Additionally, there is a set of rules that we can also memorize, where some endings have a preestablished plural. Personally, remembering this seems much more challenging than placing a new character in our story.

Let me know if you have used them, and if so what is the word you used it for.

Happy learning :)

Marcel,