RL02 - Grammar - Learning articles efficiently II
You need to nail the whole article thing in German if you want to sound proper and smart. Luckily, you can learn to easily recognize which base article a German noun needs in ~25% of the cases. You don't even have to understand the word in question. All you have got to do is to learn three magic words. They are difficult words because they don't make any sense but with a bit of practice you‘ll memorize them for good. Here are those three magic words:
der Ig-ling-or-ismus+er
das Tum-chen-ma-ment-um-lein+nis
die Heit-ung-keit-ei-schaft-ion-ie-tät-ik+ur+e
The words above consist of the most popular word-endings for each gender (masculine, neuter, feminine) that give away the article of a specific word. A few examples should make that clear:
Käfig ends in -ig and shows you that Käfig needs the article der.
Mädchen ends in -chen which tells you that Mädchen needs the article das.
Freiheit ends in -heit meaning that Freiheit needs the article die.
Learn those three magic words by heart by saying or singing them out loud together with their article, as this is what you want to learn.
NOTICE: The + sign before a syllable means that the following syllable is not 100% consistent. For example "Butter" ends in +er but is (f). They are still rather 80% reliable which qualifies them to be part of the three magic words.