Feminine nouns - gender bending for starters

They're everywhere! You can see them on the streets, in offices, on TV ... and about 50% of the people even see them in the mirror: Women

No surprise that they are also part of the German language. In German basically all nouns that describe a person also have their female form. So a baker, a manager or a customer - all got a male and a female version. I'll show you how to do it first and then I'll explain things a little further.

Usually it's very easy: You add "in" to the noun... and it suddenly becomes female. For plural you simply add "innen".

be careful of umlauts!

But if there were no exception it wouldn't be German! You can see it up there. In "Ärztin" the a changes into an ä. Why does it change and how to predict? Well, if the plural form of the noun changes its vocal into an umlaut, the female form will usually do the same.
So how do you know that the plural form changes from vocal to umlaut?
That's the problem... I don't think there's a rule for that. (If there is, please let me know!)

There is (at least) one more exception. This one is pretty easy (and reasonable... yes... German can be reasonable at times!). There are some nouns that imply the gender.
Kaufmann (businessman) ends with "mann" for example. Since Mann means "man" it pretty much implies that the person is male. You can change the "Mann" into "Frau" (woman) and then it becomes a "Kauffrau", which would be the right word for a female person of the same occupation. There are several words that end with "mann". It's always the same there.

Kaufmann = businessman

The word "Krankenschwester" (nurse) (Schwester = sister) won't become a Krankenbruder (Bruder = brother) though. This occupation was typical for women for so long, that there's no male equivalent. So people had to make up a new word for it. "Krankenpfleger" is this new word. So how to make it be female again? Right! You can simply add "in" and you got a "Krankenpflegerin" which is totally correct too.

Female forms can be used for women only. The male forms are a bit more neutral, at least this is how I feel. You can sometimes use the male form to refer to a female person too but I recommend you to try to use the correct form.

You might wonder how to refer to a group that's not entirely male or female. Well... real grammar says that a group that entirely consists of women will be referred to with the female form. As soon as there's one male person among them, male form has to be used. It's the same in many other languages. For occupations that imply the gender it is much better to say sth. like "Kaufmänner- und Frauen" though, so this would imply both.

Sadly some people don't seem to care about grammar. There's this new habit in Germany to... "unisex" words. It's really annoying and looks and sounds horrible. This was a political decision that really gives me the shivers.
That's how you do it:

Studenten = (university) students

So you add an "Innen", the i has to be capitalized. Seriously... I am all for equal rights and stuff... but don't mess with my grammar! You even have to do that in scientific papers now. (well... there are ways to avoid that though) Once more to make it clear. The "male plural" form does not exclude females, it simply doesn't say clearly whether there are women among the group or not. I think it's similar in French, Portuguese, Spanish and even Chinese. I'm not sure if the "Innen"-thing exists in Germany only or in other German speaking countries too.

So now you got the basics for the grammatical sex change in singular and plural and even know the plural of political correctness. Use and share it as much as you like, it's all yours now!

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