Ah, adjective endings – let’s be honest, people say this is German at its worst. The rules only “sort-of” make any sense, but here we are and we want to get them mostly right when we speak. It’s actually not that complicated once it clicks, but acquiring it fully can be a chore.

Adjective endings depend on the gender of the noun (masculine, feminine, or neuter), so it’s pretty hard to get the endings right if you don’t know the noun’s gender. Immerse until you get a feel for the gender of your nouns! Then come back here.

This guide is for adjectives that come before nouns in the sentence. If you’re saying something declarative like Das Haus ist alt you simply leave the adjective alone.

Ok let’s go!

“Normal” versus “Weird” articles

From immersion you already know that der, die, das feel like the “normal” articles for masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns.

Then there are those weird articles used for the other cases: dem, den, der, des feel kinda weird, right? And for today we will also decide that die for plural is weird, too. (I mean, “die” is for feminine right? Why is it also used for plural? That’s weird!)

If the article is normal, use “-e”

  • Der kleine Fuchs
  • Ich sehe die dicke, grüne Gurke
  • Das weiße Haus ist kein Waisenhaus

In all of those examples, the article is there, it is normal and nothing strange is happening. So add “-e” to your adjective and you are all set

If the article is weird, use “-en”

If your ears hear a “weird” article – den or dem, or der for a feminine noun, die for a plural – then use “-en” instead

  • Harry schläft in einem dunklen Schrank.
    (Schrank is masculine, but in einem Schrank is weird!)
  • Der kleine Fuchs schläft in der kleinen Hütte.
    (Hütte is feminine but in der Hütte is weird!)
  • Sie hat einen roten Ball gefunden. (einen Ball: weird!!)
  • Die klugen Studenten kapieren alles. (die for plural! Weird.)
  • Bis zum nächsten Mal!
    See you next time! zum is “zu dem” which is totally weird. So we get “-en”!

This works whenever the article is present and is… weird.

Sometimes the article is missing or doesn’t have an ending at all

Here’s the only tricky one, but it’s less common than the other two: sometimes the article trick doesn’t work, because there is no article! And the indefinite article ein doesn’t mark whether its noun is masculine or neuter; ein is used for both genders and that’s imprecise. German doesn’t like imprecision.

If the noun stands alone without any article at all, or if the article is ein which doesn’t have a case ending, then German just… really wants us to mark that noun with an ending somehow, so that we know what case it’s in. Consider this the “case of the missing case”.

For these, the final letter from the missing article itself is tacked onto the adjective. That way, we know for sure if the noun is the subject or the object or whatever. There is a buffer “-e” so that the rhythm of the adjective ending is always a separate (and unstressed) syllable.

Some examples should make this clear, and this will definitely start to “sound right” with immersion, so don’t panic:

  • Grüner Tee ist gesund.
    It’s “der Tee” but we have no article here, so the “r” shifts and we get “grüner Tee.”

  • Ich mag heiße Pizza und kaltes Bier.
    It’s die Pizza and das Bier, so the “-e” and “-es” get added to the adjectives.

  • Ich sehe ein großes, rotes Haus
    I see a big, red house; should be “das Haus” but there is no “das” or “s” anywhere in sight. The “-s” from “das” gets tacked onto the adjectives.

  • Ich trinke nur kalten Wein.
    I only drink cold wine; the wine is what I drink, so it would be “den Wein” but there is no “den” … so yep the “-n” from “den” goes on the adjective

  • Ich esse grüne Tomaten.
    I’m eating green tomatoes; plural would be “die Tomaten” so we get that “-e” on the adjective.

For completeness, one last twist for the genitive case: masculine and neuter nouns in the genitive case usually have a “-s” appended, e.g. Die Tür des Autos. That “-s” marks the noun as being in the genitive case. There’s no need for a “-s” on both the noun and its adjective. But note that “weak” nouns don’t have a “-s” ending, so the “-s” attaches to the adjective just like the examples above.

  • Der Geruch alten Leders
    The smell of old leather; genitive is already marked on the noun “Leder”, so the adjective gets “-en”

  • Das Gesuch obiges Adressaten
    The above addressee’s request; genitive is not marked on the weak noun “Adressat” so the adjective gets the genitive “-s”

And with that, all your adjectives endings are correct.

Recap

With these three guidelines you can get every adjective ending correct:

  1. Adjectives following “normal” articles get -e
  2. Adjectives after “weird” articles all get -en
  3. Adjectives bear the burden of the final letter of any missing article (or case), so you can hear/understand what case the noun is in.

Bonus Round: This works in reverse, too!

This guide is written to help you produce adjective endings, but for immersion learners this will help you understand spoken German, too.

Now, whenever you hear adjectives with the -en ending, you instantly know that the phrase was in something weird! Your ears and brain have now been primed to think “hey, that was probably an object”, or maybe it was in a weird prepositional phrase.

As English natives, we are always expecting word order to tell us what’s the subject and what’s the object. This one weird trick will help you notice when speakers have flipped things around on you.

And hearing those other weird endings like -es and -er over and over helps us, too: they are secretly telling you the gender of nouns that you might not otherwise know.

Have fun,

..b

FOOTNOTE: Weak masculine nouns

Umm, what are “weak masculine nouns” you ask? They are a group of masculine nouns that take special endings. The way to know which nouns are in this group is helpfully simple and also describes how to use them:

  • If a masculine noun’s plural is formed by adding the “-en” ending, then it is in this group of “weak” masculine nouns.
  • All of these nouns get a special “-en” ending in all three non-subject cases: the accusative, dative, genitive forms of this noun all get an “-en” suffix.
  • Most of these nouns are professions describing men, or nouns derived from adjectives describing men.
    • der Präsident / die Präsidenten
    • der Student / die Studenten
    • der Dicke / die Dicken