Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to build German compound nouns and correctly determine their gender.

Lesson Explanation

One of the genuinely best-known features of German: nouns can be combined into a single, unbroken word almost without limit, with no space or hyphen (unlike English, where multiple separate words are more common): die Hand + der Schuh → der Handschuh (hand + shoe → glove, literally “hand-shoe,” i.e. hand covering).

A genuinely important, reliable principle: the gender of a compound noun ALWAYS follows the last component, regardless of the gender of the preceding parts: die Hand (feminine) + der Schuh (masculine) → der Handschuh (masculine, since “der Schuh” is the last, decisive component).

Some compounds need a connecting element between the parts, often -s- or -n-, especially when the first part would otherwise stand in the genitive or plural: die Liebe + der Brief → der Liebesbrief (love + letter → love letter, with an inserted “-s-“), die Blume + der Strauß → der Blumenstrauß (flower + bunch → bouquet, with an inserted “-n-,” matching the regular plural pattern from Part 1, Lesson 1).

This ability to form compounds allows genuinely long, but always logically breakable-down, words: die Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung (speed limit — Geschwindigkeit + Begrenzung), der Kühlschrank (refrigerator — kühl + Schrank) — every compound noun can, with a little practice, be traced back to its individual, already-known components.

Practice Questions