Gender

In German, there are three genders that are indicated by the definite article.

In contrast to the number and case of a noun that undergo changes, the gender of a noun remains unchanged.

Grammatical vs natural gender

The grammatical gender is, to a great extent, arbitrary. That is why one should learn it with the noun. There are no particular rules that determine the gender of a noun, except some morphological features that can, sometimes, indicate the gender of a noun.

Nouns that refer to people or other animate creatures have both a natural (male or female) and a grammatical gender, which are consistent.

There are, however, a few exceptions. The noun Mädchen, for example, which is neuter (grammatical gender: neuter das Mädchen), although it refers to a person of the feminine gender (natural gender: feminine).

When referring to animals, quite often the natural gender is not consistent with the grammatical gender, especially with

- nouns that indicate a group of animals of the same species e.g. das Pferd, die Biene, das Rind, das Schwein etc.

- or young animals like das Lamm, das Kalb, das Küken, der Welpe etc.