Hobbies and sport in German

To say you like doing something, add gern to the verb: Ich schwimme gern. Games and instruments both take spielen — Fußball spielen, Gitarre spielen — with no article. A verb used as a noun is always das: das Lesen, das Wandern. Of these 23 words, 18 are among the 5,000 most common; the other 5 are basic words, marked with a dash.