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  5. The men drink water.In German…


The men drink water.In German for men we use "the" as der , but in this statement used "die" for men

I wan to know the explanation for this change

April 12, 2018



Be sure to check out the tips and hints. They. are hidden - but if you click on the light bulb you'll see them.


All plurals in German are feminine, therefore they use the article "die" instead of "der".


Plurals in German are not feminine. They do use the article die in the nominative and accusative case though.


it is true that there are two cases which do not use die in the plurals. but if you are building plurals just as an exercise without taking the cases into account you will always use die for all the plurals. like

der Hund- die Hunde

der Baum- die Bäume

der Raum- die Räume

das Messer- die Messer

das Kissen- die Kissen

das Glas - die Gläser

die Decke- die Decken

die Gabel- die Gabeln

die Maus- die Mäuse


When I learn nouns I learn the gender and plural like:

m, Hund, Hunde
n, Messer, Messer
f, Decke, Decken

I feel it is best not to get used to thinking about the nominative article so much because you will need to think about what article to use when constructing a sentence. Many times you will say "den Hund", "mit den Messern", etc.


You are eating the apple. Here the is "den "not das please explain it


We read the books . here the is ''die" y?


German distinguish 3 genders that a word can have and English only has one and therefore the translation to "the" changes.

Here an example for all 3 genders with the articles. It's always indefinite singular - definite singular - indefinite plural - definite plural

Masculine ein Apfel - der Apfel - Äpfel - die Äpfel (an apple - the apple - apples - the apples)

Feminine eine Kuh - die Kuh - Kühe - die Kühe (a cow - the cow - cows - the cows)

Neuter ein Buch - das Buch - Bücher - die Bücher (a book - the book - books - the books)

Then there are different cases (like dative, accusative) where the translation changes again. I recommend you to check out the tips&notes and the link that EL5tEL posted above.


because it is plural. plural is always die.

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