KS4 · German · Year 11
Die Brüder Grimm: plural nouns, weak masculine nouns
Travel and tourism: Kulturszene
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IllumED Slides
IllumED · 1/9
Your learning goal
I can form the plurals of a range of German nouns and explore their use in the context of learning about 'die Brüder Grimm'.
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Die Brüder Grimm: plural nouns, weak masculine nouns: slides adapted from the imported teaching text; recall questions created from its keywords, learning points and common mistakes. Self-check practice, with no automatic grading or XP. Answers stay on this page and are cleared when you leave.
Original teaching resources
The original illustrated PowerPoint is available as well as the IllumED text slides. It retains the publisher’s design and credits.
Download original PowerPoint ↓What you’ll learn
I can form the plurals of a range of German nouns and explore their use in the context of learning about 'die Brüder Grimm'.
Key learning points
- Not all nouns form their plural in the same way, but there are helpful patterns we can learn.
- Some nouns add an umlaut to the vowel in their plural form, e.g., 'Bäume'. Pay attention to the change in pronunciation.
- Some masculine nouns referring to people and weak masculine nouns form their plural by adding '-(e)n'.
- Plural nouns add '-n' in their dative plural forms, e.g., 'den Brüdern'.
- Die Brüder Grimm published a world-famous collection of fairy tales in 1812, which was called 'Kinder- und Hausmärchen'.
Words to know
- plural
- more than one
- weak masculine noun
- a small set of masculine nouns that add '-(e)n' in all forms apart from the nominative singular
Common mistakes
All nouns ending '-n' must be in the dative case.
The definite article 'den' shows the dative plural form as well as the '-n' added to the end of the dative plural. However, a number of nouns form their plural by adding '-(e)n' and are not in the dative case.
For parents, carers and teachers
- All the plural forms, including dative plural nouns are Foundation Tier; weak masculine nouns are Higher-tier grammar. Many of the German-language fairy tales collected by the Brüder Grimm are freely available online to use with students.