What are weak, strong, and mixed nouns in German?

One way that we can categorize German nouns is by how they are declined, or put into different forms. In German, they fall into two main groups, weak and strong, though sometimes you’ll also see a noun categorized as mixed. Knowing the group a noun belongs to will help you use the right endings when you use it in forms that reflect its case and number.

Though knowing a noun’s gender is essential to picking the right forms of the words that go with the noun, like its article (der, die, das), knowing a nouns declension group is more important if you’re trying to pick the right endings for the noun itself.

In this post, we’ll introduce these three declension patterns, discuss how to decline nouns in each group, and give you some tips for how to learn and study the declensions of different German nouns. Ready to have a look? Let’s dive in!

A declension is a pattern you can follow to put a noun into different forms depending on its role or meaning in a sentence. In German, the form of a noun will depend on its case and number.

• Number → German nouns can be singular (for one) or plural (for more than one)

• Case → In German, a noun’s case depends on its grammatical role in a sentence. Here are the rough descriptions:

  • Nominative is for subjects

  • Genitive is for possessors

  • Dative is for indirect objects (recipients)

  • Accusative is for direct objects

Notice that the noun Hund (meaning dog) receives different endings when used in different cases and numbers: these endings are dictated by its declension pattern!

• Mein Hund beißt nicht.

  Translation: My dog doesn’t bite.
• genitive plural

  In unserer Nachbarschaft gibt es einen Haufen Hunde.

  Translation: There are a lot of dogs in our neighborhood.
• dative plural

  Wir gehen oft mit den Hunden aus dem Tierheim spazieren.

  Translation: We often go for walks with the dogs from the shelter.
• genitive singular

  Die Pfote des Hundes ist verletzt. Wir sollten ihn zum Tierarzt bringen.

  Translation: The dog’s paw is injured. We should take him to the vet.

See how the ending of Hund is different in every sentence? The respective ending a noun takes depends on what class it belongs to.

German weak nouns are all masculine, but not all masculine nouns are weak. Weak nouns mostly are words for humans or animals, but they tend to fall into three major groups:

• Those that end in -e:

• Those that take Latin and Greek endings like -nt, -aph, -af, -ege, -ist, -aut, or -ekt:

• Some other very old German nouns:

Ultimately, though, if you want to know whether a noun is weak, you’ll want to look it up! The rules above can help you guess that a noun might be weak, but they won’t get you all the way there.

In German, strong nouns can belong to any gender and have no special identifying features. The best way to identify them is to look them up.In German, strong nouns can belong to any gender and have no special identifying features. The best way to identify them is to look them up.

Strong nouns are less regular than weak nouns, but there are some rules to help you decline them. Let’s look first at the singular forms, which are quite regular, and then we’ll talk a bit about the plural forms, which are trickier.

In German, you will hear the term “mixed nouns” used to refer to some exceptional nouns that have features of both strong and weak nouns. This term is applied to a few different types of nouns:

• Weak nouns with an -s in the genitive singular:

  A classic example of a mixed noun is the noun das Name (meaning name), which is mostly a weak noun, but also acquires the genitive singular -s that is usually associated with strong nouns. Have a look:

  Case	Singular	Plural
  Nominative	der Name Translation: name	die Namen Translation: names
  Accusative	dem Namen	die Namen
  Dative	den Namen	den Namen
  Genitive	des Namens	der Namen

• Nouns with two possible declensions: one strong, one weak:

  Case	Singular	Plural
  Nominative	der Chirurg (meaning surgeon)	die Chirurgen (meaning surgeons)
  Accusative	dem Chirurgen / Chirurg*	die Chirurgen
  Dative	den Chirurgen / Chirurg*	den Chirurgen
  Genitive	des Chirurgen / Chirurgs*	der Chirurgen

• Strong nouns with -en plurals:

  Is also sometimes applied to strong nouns that just “look like” weak nouns because their plural ends in -(e)n. Two examples might be die Katze (meaning cat) and das Ende (meaning end).

  • Case	Singular	Plural
    Nominative	das Ende	die Enden
    Accusative	des Endes	den Enden
    Dative	dem Ende	der Enden
    Genitive	das Ende	die Enden

  • Case	Singular	Plural
    Nominative	die Katze	die Katzen
    Accusative	der Katze	den Katzen
    Dative	der Katze	der Katzen
    Genitive	die Katze	die Katzen

Therefore the term “mixed noun” is broadly used for “strongish weak nouns” or “weakish strong nouns,” in German.

Let’s recap what we have learned about German weak, strong, and mixed nouns in this article:

• Weak nouns are all masculine and end with -(e)n in every form except the nominative singular.

• Strong nouns have unpredictable plural endings, but their case marking follows two main rules:

  • add -(e)s to the genitive singular

  • add -n to the dative plural

• Mixed nouns have some features of strong nouns and some features of weak ones.

Ready to practice? Check out these exercises to practice using strong vs. weak nouns in German!