German Home Immersion School/Lessons/Plurals

The landscape of how plurals are created in German is much more rich than in most other languages.

At the same time, it is quite challenging to master.

We will start the levels of this with some easy intro videos and lessons

and end with the merging of this lesson into the Meisterübung for nouns entitled "Noun Clans."

Level 1 - Quick intro to plurals
Watch at least one video and do at least one lesson on plurals to get acquainted with the situation.

If you're on Duolingo, make sure you've done the lesson on it!

Level 2
By now you've probably realized that German plurals are a little tricky.

You don't have to perfect your knowledge of plurals immediately to use them. All you need to do is know how to practice.

When practicing nouns, there are a couple things you should make a habit of. One of them is to make note of the plural forms of the noun.

Here's an exercise to practice correct memorization of plurals. Write 5 sentences that use the noun a different way. Example...
 * 1) Choose any word. I'll choose the word for cow (Kuh)
 * 2) Make sure you have a dictionary in your mini-immersion classroom for checking meaning, genders and plurals. Recommended dict.cc
 * 3) If you didn't know before, make sure you know the base gender of the noun. (Die Kuh)
 * 4) Also check the sound changes in the plural form. (die Kühe)
 * 5) Practice a sentence grid to work on the different plural forms
 * 1) Nominative Singular
 * 2) Nominative Plural
 * 3) Accusative Plural
 * 4) Dative Plural (most words will add an -n or -en ending)
 * 5) Genetive Plural

Die Kuh ist alt.

Die Kühe sind alt.

Ich habe die Kühe

Es passt den Kühen

Das ist das Hause der Kühe

Get a native speaker or your teacher to check this exercise.

Forever after this, make sure you memorize nouns with their plural form

Also, why not go over one or two more free lessons from the resources below!

Level 3
This level will begin to merge your understanding of plurals with that of other nouns.

The fabric of noun declension is interwoven with the ways nouns become pluralized and declined in the different cases.

To understand this, I recommend reading a few lessons on Noun Declension to learn how plurals are formed in a wider variety of situations.

When you have done this, complete the following exercise
 * 1) Choose five new nouns you have learned
 * 2) Using the guidelines in the lessons, classify each noun's plural type
 * 3) Do a sentence grid to put the plural form of each word into context
 * 4) Classify all new nouns you learn, forever after, according to their plural type!

Lessons with tests on German Plurals
https://deutsch.lingolia.com/en/grammar/nouns-and-articles/plural

https://www.duolingo.com/skill/de/Plurals

Video Lessons on German Plurals
Video intro from "Get Germanized"

Lessons on German Plurals
http://www.vistawide.com/german/grammar/german_nouns02.htm

Lessons on Noun Declension
http://germanforenglishspeakers.com/nouns/weak-nouns-the-n-declension/

http://www.germanveryeasy.com/noun-declension

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