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German plurals

German plurals: which ending, and how to guess it

German has five plural endings, some with an umlaut, and no single rule. But the gender of the singular narrows it down a lot. We matched 351 nouns among the 5,000 most common German words with their plural: 94% of the feminine ones take -(e)n, and 78% of the masculine ones -e.

The plural by gender

die feminine · 185 nouns
-n or -en94%
-e1%
umlaut + -e2%
-s2%
umlaut only1%
Latin and Greek1%

Informationen, Kenntnisse, Lehrkräfte, Apps

der masculine · 93 nouns
-n or -en8%
-e51%
umlaut + -e28%
umlaut + -er1%
-s11%
umlaut only2%

Menschen, Tage, Gäste, Männer

das neuter · 73 nouns
-n or -en3%
-e52%
-er7%
umlaut + -er8%
-s21%
Latin and Greek10%

Interessen, Jahre, Kinder, Länder

Only plurals that appear as their own form in the list can be counted, so nouns with no plural ending (der Lehrer → die Lehrer, das Zimmer → die Zimmer) are missing from these figures.

Rules of thumb

Every ending, with the nouns from the list

-n or -en · 182

-e · 86

umlaut + -e · 30

-er · 5

umlaut + -er · 7

-s · 29

umlaut only · 3

Latin and Greek · 9

Questions

How do you form the plural in German?

With one of five endings — -e, -er, -(e)n, -s or none — sometimes with an umlaut. The gender of the singular is the best guide: feminine nouns take -(e)n, masculine ones mostly -e, neuter ones -e or -er.

What is the plural of der, die, das?

Always die: der Tag → die Tage, das Kind → die Kinder, die Frau → die Frauen.

Which plural is most common?

-(e)n. Of the 351 noun pairs we counted in the 5,000 most common German words, 182 form the plural with -n or -en — nearly all of them feminine.

Why is there an -n on Kindern?

The dative plural adds -n to every plural that does not already end in -n or -s: die Kinder, but mit den Kindern.

More German grammar