Grammatical gender sorts every Latin noun into one of three groups: masculine, feminine, or neuter.
Can recognize Noun gender in a short Latin prompt
Schau dir diese Beispiele an. Kannst du das grammatische Muster erkennen?
My hand hurts.
The day is long.
Achte auf die hervorgehobenen Teile. Was haben sie gemeinsam?
Grammatical gender sorts every Latin noun into one of three groups: masculine, feminine, or neuter. This is not about biological sex; it is a grammatical class that decides which adjective endings and pronouns a noun takes. You learn a noun's gender as part of the word, the way you learn its spelling.
English has almost no grammatical gender, so this is a genuinely new idea. We say "the big table" no matter what; Latin makes the adjective agree with the noun's gender, so gender is something you must track from the start.
| Gender | Typical example | Rough guide |
|---|---|---|
| Masculine | servus (slave), puer (boy) | many 2nd-decl. -us/-er |
| Feminine | puella (girl), rosa (rose) | most 1st-decl. -a |
| Neuter | bellum (war), nōmen (name) | 2nd-decl. -um and many 3rd-decl. |
Gender controls agreement:
Two cautions. Do not assume gender always matches meaning or ending: agricola (farmer) ends in -a but is masculine because farmers were men, and third-declension nouns give few visible clues, so learn their gender from the dictionary. When you meet a new noun, store three things together: the word, its genitive, and its gender.
Wende diese Grammatik in den Übungen des Kurses A1 an
ÜbungsaufgabenMy hand hurts.
Manus ends in -us and is feminine: fourth declension. The ending is a clue, not a rule.
The day is long.
Dies is usually masculine but turns feminine when it means an appointed day - a rare case of gender carrying meaning.
Im Kurs üben
Wende diese Grammatik in den Übungen des Kurses A1 an