Anyone who is just starting to learn German is faced with the problem of articles. It is difficult for a Russian speaker to understand this topic, because in our speech we do not use anything similar to articles in German. In this article, we simply and simply answer the most common questions among beginners on this topic.
There are several types of articles in German: definite, indefinite and zero. Consider each of them in order.
Definite article
There are only four of them:
Der – for masculine nouns (der);
Die - for feminine (di);
Das - for the neuter gender (das);
Die - plural (di).
They are used in the following cases:
- When we know what it's about. If this subject has already been discussed before. For example: der Hund (a certain dog already mentioned).
- To designate phenomena that are one of a kind, analogues of which do not exist in nature (die Erde - Earth).
- To designate many geographical objects: rivers, cities, mountains, seas, oceans, streets and so on (die Alpen - Alps).
- If our noun is preceded by an ordinal number (der dritte Mann - the third person) or a superlative adjective (der schnellste Mann - the fastest person).
Indefinite article
Ein - masculine and neuter (Ain);
Eine - feminine (Aine).
There is no article for the plural in this case.
The indefinite article in German is used in cases:
- When we talk about things we don't know (ein Hund - some kind of dog we hear about for the first time).
- After the phrase "es gibt" (literally "there is"), for simplicity, we can draw an analogy with the English "there is" (Es gibt einen Weg - there is a road here).
- For species or class designations (Der Löwe ist ein Raubtier - lion - predatory animal).
- With the verbs Haben (to have) and Brauchen (to need). For example: "Ich habe eine Arbeit" - I have a job.
Zero article
Not all German articles actually exist. There is such a thing as the zero article. In fact, this is the absence of the article at all. So we don't write anything before a noun if:
- It denotes a profession or occupation (Sie ist Ärztin - she is a doctor).
- Before many proper names (London ist die Hauptstadt von Großbritannien - London is the capitalUK).
- To denote the plural (Hier wohnen Menschen - people live here).
- When designating any chemical substance, material (aus Gold - from gold).
Almost always the gender of a noun in Russian and the articles corresponding to it in German differ from each other. For example, if we have a “girl” of a feminine gender, then in German - middle - “das Mädchen”. It means "girl". There is a set of endings with which you can make it easier to determine the gender of a noun, but for the most part there is only one way out - to remember.
Another difficulty is the declension of articles in German. Just as we don't say "I see a girl" in Russian, so it is in German. Each article is inflected for cases. The task is facilitated by the fact that there are only four cases: Nominativ (nominative), Genetiv (genitive), Dativ (dative) and Akkusativ (like accusative). Declension just needs to be remembered. For your convenience, we will provide a table below.
| husband. R. | female R. | avg. R. | pl. number | |
| Nom | der | die | das | die |
| Akk | den | die | das | die |
| Dat | dem | der | dem | den |
| Gen | des | der | des | der |
As for the indefinite articles, they tend tosame principle. For example, the masculine article ein in Akk would be einen, simply adding -en to it. This happens with all other articles.
