The der/die/das rules / Weather and cardinal points

Rule for masculine · der

Weather and cardinal points

Weather & directions → der, but Wetter/Gewitter are das.

The rule, in plain language

Many nature- and weather-related nouns are masculine in German, just like the cardinal directions: der Osten, der Westen, der Süden. This is a semantic rule, fairly rare (14 words, 0.6% of our course), but useful for this small group of nouns. Watch out though: the base word for "weather" itself is an exception - das Wetter is neuter, and so is das Gewitter (thunderstorm). So the rule holds for directions and individual phenomena, but not for the umbrella word "weather" itself.

In the A1-B1 vocabulary of the Genau course, this rule covers 14 words (0.6%) and has 2 exceptions - all listed below.

Representative examples

The exceptions

These contradict the rule - learn them as-is:

All course words that follow this rule

Rules stick through practice. In the Genau app you train exactly this rule on its own words, with the GENAU! stamp on every correct answer - free, offline, no account. Coming soon to the App Store.