How to Master the Plural Forms of German Nouns: A Simplified Guide

One day a student of mine asks a relatively mundane question in class. “How do you make things plural in German? Can I just add an S like in English?” You should have seen the look on his face when I told him that there are 9 different ways to change a noun from singular to plural listed in his textbook and that wasn’t even an exhaustive list.

I probably scared that kid a bit more than necessary, but the general premise is the same. There ARE nouns in German that simply add an S to the end of the noun to become the plural version. But others add E. Some ER. Others an umlaut. So how do we decide which version to use? By the time you finish this lesson you will be an expert in the plural forms of German nouns and you’ll go from “Das kann ich nicht.” to “Das ist kein Problem.” in no time.

What you need to know about the plural forms of German nouns

In order to really understand plural forms of nouns, I’m going to teach you several things. First, I’ll lay the groundwork for how plurals act in the German language on a broad scale. Then I will show you the most common ways that singular nouns are changed into their plural forms. Once we get the common ones down, I’ll talk about some lesser used changes. In the end I’ll give you some tips and tricks that can make this whole system easier and require only 10% of your brain, so you can use the rest of your brain capacity for storing pictures of birds with arms.

Each German noun has at the very least a change in the article used in front of it.

You are already familiar with the articles that are commonly associated with masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns; der, die, and das.

The plural forms of German nouns require the article “die” when used as the subject or direct object of the sentence, i.e. when used in the nominative or accusative cases.

The article changes to “den” in the dative case and “der” in the genitive case. If you are just learning about plural forms of nouns, however, there is a very high likelihood that you simply need to use “die” as the article for all plural nouns.

Most German nouns have both a singular and a plural version.

For example:
die Karte (card, ticket) - die Karten (cards, tickets)
der Hund (dog) - die Hunde (dogs)

Some nouns are almost exclusively used in the singular.

For example:
das Geld (money), der Käse (cheese), der Hunger (hunger), die Milch (milk), das Chaos (chaos)
There is a plural form of “das Geld”, “die Gelder” (monies), but this has a slightly different meaning. You can say “die Käse” (cheeses) for the plural of “der Käse”, but this is used in pretty specific circumstances. Most people would probably use “die Käsesorten” (types of cheese) instead.

Some nouns only have a plural version.

For example:
die Eltern (parents), die Leute (people), die Ferien (vacation, break)
To talk about one parent, you either use “der Vater” (father) or “die Mutter” (mother) or the word “das Elternteil” (parental unit), which has always sounded odd to me.

Before I get into the patterns that nouns follow when changing to the plural, it is important to note that there aren’t really any hard and fast rules.

The patterns I am going to show you will help you a lot in memorizing the plural forms of nouns, because they work most of the time, but you are still going to have to learn them for each noun, just like you did for the genders of the nouns.

By the way, I just made a lesson about how to master der, die, and das with the least effort possible, so you should check that out when you are done with this lesson.

Pattern 1: Unchanged Forms

Some German nouns keep it simple: the noun itself does not change, but the article becomes "die". This of course means that none of the feminine nouns are in this category, as the change would not be noticed. Examples include "der Computer" to "die Computer" and "das Mädchen" to "die Mädchen".

While there are very few absolutes in the German language, you can be assured that any noun that ends with the diminutive endings -chen or -lein, the plural form simply does not change. Examples: das Mädchen - die Mädchen, das Männlein - die Männlein, das Bäumchen - die Bäumchen

A slightly less reliable rule is that nouns that end with -er usually don't change in the plural. Examples: der Computer - die Computer, der Lehrer - die Lehrer, der Rechner - die Rechner, der Schüler - die Schüler

You can actually generalize this rule a bit more and say that masculine or neuter nouns that end with -el or -er don’t change the noun. Instead they simply change the article.

der Onkel - die Onkel , der Löffel - die Löffel, der Würfel - die Würfel
der Fahrer - die Fahrer, der Lehrer - die Lehrer, der Schüler - die Schüler

There are a few quirks to add to this list. There are a few masculine nouns that add an umlaut in addition to changing the article to “die”. For example:
der Apfel - die Äpfel
der Bruder - die Brüder
der Garten - die Gärten
der Laden - die Läden
der Schwager - die Schwäger
der Vater - die Väter
der Vogel - die Vögel

While there are no feminine nouns in the strict “no change” category, there are a couple that require only an umlaut, namely: die Mutter - die Mütter and die Tochter - die Töchter. These are the only two that I have ever found that do this, however.

Pattern 2: Adding -e, ¨e, or ¨er

Here is a fun statistic: 80% of masculine nouns and 75% of neuter nouns will simply add -e to the end of the noun and change the article to “die” when creating the plural. In fact, if the noun ends with -ling, -ig, or -ich, it will definitely use an -e for the plural. Here are a few examples of that.

der Flüchtling - die Flüchtlinge, der Schmetterling - die Schmetterlinge, der Zwilling - die Zwillinge
der König - die Könige, der Käfig - die Käfige
der Sittich - die Sittiche, der Pfirsich - die Pfirsiche, der Teppich - die Teppiche

Notable weirdness: When a word ends with -nis, you have to add -e, but you also double the -s at the end.
die Kenntnis - die Kenntnisse, das Geheimnis - die Geheimnisse

This ending isn’t just used with these suffixes, however. I already mentioned that 80% of masculine nouns and 75% of neuter nouns use -e for the ending. Here are some examples that don’t end with the suffixes I mentioned.
der Bleistift - die Bleistifte, das Spiel - die Spiele, der Freund - die Freunde, das Heft - die Hefte, das Problem - die Probleme, der Tag - die Tage, der Tisch - die Tische

Occasionally this ending is also used for nouns that have a flair for the dramatic. They require an umlaut in addition to -e. For example:
der Ball - die Bälle, der Hof - die Höfe, die Stadt - die Städte, der Stuhl - die Stühle

There are also a few that add -er instead of just -e. Those nouns will always have an umlaut in the plural form and will never be feminine. For example:
das Buch - die Bücher, das Fach - die Fächer, das Haus - die Häuser

Pattern 3: Adding -n, -en, or -nen

The German language really likes adding -n to stuff. That is incredibly apparent in the way nouns become plural. There are three subcategories that all end with the word ending with -n. The first is the easiest, simply add -n to the noun and change the article to “die”.

This generally happens with nouns that end in -e, which coincidentally are usually feminine nouns. Neither of those are hard rules, as not all nouns that end with -e are feminine and not all nouns that take -n for the plural end with -e. There are a bunch of nouns, however, that do follow that rule. For example:
die Ecke - die Ecken, die Note - die Noten, die Pause - die Pausen, die Woche - die Wochen, die Schule - die Schulen, die Gitarre - die Gitarren, die Hausaufgabe - die Hausaufgaben, die Tasche - die Taschen, die Tante - die Tanten, die Woche - die Wochen.

The only noun that requires -n in the plural, but does not end with -e would be: die Schwester - die Schwestern

If a noun is feminine, but ends with a consonant, you will likely add -en instead of just -n. There are also a few masculine nouns that use -en for the plural form.
die Arbeit - die Arbeiten, die Uhr - die Uhren, die Tür - die Türen, der Herr - die Herren

Some feminine nouns don’t end with a consonant, but will still require -en. For example: die Frau - die Frauen

When you start with the masculine version of something, usually an occupation or nationality, and you want to make a feminine form of that, you generally add -in and if possible an umlaut to create that feminine version. For example:

der Arzt - die Ärztin, der Freund - die Freundin, der Lehrer - die Lehrerin

All of those are just feminine versions of the masculine nouns. In order to make those plural, we add -nen. This is one of the rules that you can take to the bank. It will always work. If you have a feminine version of a noun that ends with -in, add -nen for the plural.
die Ärztin - die Ärztinnen, die Freundin - die Freundinnen, die Lehrerin - die Lehrerinnen

Pattern 4: Cognates and Endings in -o, -a, -i

The last pattern that you can actually rely on is nouns that add -s for the plural. These include lots of English words that have been borrowed into the German vocabulary and almost every noun in the entire German language that ends with -i, -a or -o. For example:
das Kino - die Kinos, das Auto - die Autos, der Radiergummi - die Radiergummis, der Cousin - die Cousins, der Krimi - die Krimis, die CD - die CDs

It’s also the standard plural ending of abbreviations. LKWs (semi-trucks, lorries, Pkws (passenger vehicles), DVDs (DVDs), Navis (navigation systems), LCDs (LCDs), 5 GBs (GehBehs) (gigabytes).

There are a few words that end with -i, -a, or -o, but have been around in German for long enough to have developed their own legitimately German plural endings, but there are some people that still use an S ending instead, such as: die Pizza - die Pizzas or die Pizzen (pizza), das Konto - die Kontos or die Konten (account).

Miscellaneous Outliers

Technically speaking there are other plural patterns in German. These are usually words that are stolen from other languages and then they use a Germanized version of that language’s plural formation. For example: “das Museum” (museum) becomes “die Museen”, “der Kaktus” (cactus) becomes “die Kakteen” and my least favorite: “das Konzertsaal” (concert hall) becomes “die Konzertsäle”.

These kinds of plural formations are so rare that it is in your best interest to simply commit them to memory when you encounter them. Or do like the Germans do and just make up your own version that sounds vaguely Germanic. I found out while researching this lesson that some Germans use the plural of “Kaktus” as “die Kaktusse”.

If you are a super-nerd like me, you might be bored enough to look at the list of these kinds of nouns that I found on cafe-lingua.de.

If you want to practice what you learned in this lesson or any of the other lessons on this site, check out my Deutschlerner Club. I share extra materials like worksheets, video scripts and mp3 downloads for every lesson. There are already hundreds of lessons available.

I hope you found this explanation enlightening and definitely a better answer than I gave that kid in my class way back when. Just remember that all plural nouns require the article “die” unless you are using the dative or genitive cases. Most nouns will either add -e or -n or some variation thereof. The other outliers can be learned when you learn the noun itself.

Remember, practice makes perfect! Keep exploring and using these forms in your German language journey. Viel Erfolg. Viel Glück. Am wichtigsten aber, viel Spaß. Tschüss.