Der, Die, Das - The Secrets of German Gender

Constantin’s quest to improve his German led him to publish a book about the ground-breaking discoveries of the connection between German nouns and their gender. Having studied Greek and Latin – which, like German, also have three genders – he started by looking for similar patterns between German nouns and their gender. It was, however, much easier to identify the gender of Greek and Latin nouns – the clues were in the noun endings. This made the connection between nouns and their gender logical in Greek and Latin. German was different; it was as if it had deliberately been made harder for those outside the tribe. But given his background as a financial markets analyst in London, New York and Zurich, and his interest in a good challenge, Constantin assumed that there had to be some logic between German nouns and their gender. This issue was simply too important for the ability of a tribe to communicate with its members for it to be arbitrary. Accordingly, he kept a notebook of each and every pattern that he found linking German nouns to their gender. He found numerous blogs on the topic, but noticed that whereas they typically provided examples of patterns, they never seemed to explain the exceptions to the pattern. It was the exceptions that had always interested him. There had to be a reason for the exceptions. The more he focused on the exceptions, the more new patterns he discovered. For example, whereas it is widely known that German nouns ending on ‑ung or ‑heit tend to be feminine, the reason why Schwung should be masculine and Fahrenheit neuter, requires some work to solve the riddle. Thus, the exceptions reveal the insights that single-syllable nouns (Schwung) tend to be masculine, whereas many units of scientific measurement (Fahrenheit) are neuter. Once we know that, we can do some reverse engineering to find more patterns. Focusing on these “exceptions” reveals the important link between German gender and similar categories of nouns. Once we know the significance of similar categories, many pieces of the gender puzzle fall into place. So we now know that there is, after all, a logic to the link between German nouns and their gender – it was just waiting to be discovered. What started out as Constantin’s hand-written notes to himself, led to the publication of this book, which has been a top-seller on Amazon, and has been translated into several languages – including German. The book was featured at the Frankfurter Buchmesse in October 2018.