Learning German doesn't have to be hard.

Back in 2010, I went from a beginner level to near mastery in German in

just 3 months. But Im not a language genius, or a natural with languages.

If languages came naturally to me, then I would have aced German the
first time round. I didnt. I spent five years studying German at high school,
and I got a C as my final grade. I couldnt even order a train ticket in
German when I visited Munich a few years ago.

After I became fluent in my first 4 languages, I decided to give German a

second attempt. I aimed to be a fluent German speaker in just three
months.

After just three months of living in Germany, I passed four out of five
sections of Goethe Instituts Zentrale Oberstufenprfung (German mastery
exam).

What changed? I stopped telling myself how hard German was and started
focusing on the positive. Creating a positive filter made the language easy
for me.

Yes, you read that right. German can be easy.

This isnt about fooling yourself with empty mantras or willing the universe
to make it easy for you. There are very logical and systematic ways of
looking at German to make sure that you keep this positive feedback loop
up and make swift progress in the language.

Ive decided to reveal these techniques in my in-depth guide Why German

is Easy.

To create this guide, I took the hardest grammar and vocabulary points
and presented them in a new way that shows you how you can learn
German as quickly as possible.

Heres a sneak peek of whats inside.

THE EASY WAY TO PLURALISE WORDS IN

GERMAN
Why cant German just add s for plurals like in English?

This question comes up a lot, but it ignores the many irregular plurals we
have in English, too.

By far the most common plural ending for feminine nouns in German (and
occasionally for some masculine or neuter ones) is n or en. This sounds
familiar when you look at certain English words, like ox/en and child/ren.

In English we actually did this quite a lot in the past! The archaic/poetic
word brethren, now used in fraternal order, actually used to be the standard
plural form of brother (initially written brether).

This is even more evident in word root changes. For example, English has
foot/feet, (wo)man/men, tooth/teeth, mouse/mice,
goose/geese. This is actually more complicated than the German
equivalent of adding an umlaut and no ending or e/-erendings in words
like Hand/Hnde, Wand/Wnde, Nacht/Nchte, Apfel/pfel, Vater/Vter.

Once again, its ordinarily suggested that you simply learn the plural as you
learn the word (so theoretically, every time you meet a new word youd
 have to learn the gender, the plural, and the word itself, as well as any
special case declensions phew, sounds exhausting!)

This is not a practical solution, especially for beginner to intermediate

learners who have many other things to worry about. So once again, I
recommend you use some short cuts!

9 SIMPLE SHORTCUTS FOR GERMAN

PLURALS
One of the books for German learners that I highly recommend Hammers
German Grammar and Usage by Martin Durrell, and in the book the author
shares some very helpful statistics. Ill share the most important ones
below, but keep in mind that you shouldnt try to memorise these right now,
just use them for reference to help you understand the simple rule of thumb
Ill introduce.

Masculine:

Most masculine nouns have a plural in -e or e. The umlaut goes over about
half of the nouns where it would be possible (i.e. not over i or e),
g. Arm/Arm(e), Hund/Hund(e), Fu/F(e), Stuhl/Sthl(e).
Most masculine nouns ending in -el, -en, or -er form their plural without an
ending or umlaut, g. Onkel, Bcker, Computer (same in singular and plural).
A small number of masculine nouns have the plural -en or -n, especially
weak nouns (see any grammar book explanation for what this means).
Feminine:

Over 90% of all feminine nouns have the plural -en/-n, g. Arbeit(en),
Regel(n), Studentin(nen) (the last n gets doubled for -in ending nouns).
About a quarter of feminine monosyllables have a plural in e,
g. Hand/Hnd(e), Nacht/Ncht(e), Stadt/Stdt(e), etc.
Neuter:

About three quarters of neuter nouns have the plural -e, e.g. Bein(e),
Jahr(e).
Slightly less than a quarter of neuter nouns have the plural er/-er. The
umlaut is used if possible and the majority are either mon- osyllabic,
e.g. Dorf/Drf(er), Kind/Kind(er), or start with Ge, e.g. Gesicht(er),
Gehalt(er), Geschlecht(er).
Neuter nouns ending in -el, -en, -er (note that this is the same as for
masculine); diminutives ending in -chen, -lein; and words formed with ..e all
 have the same plural as the singular form, e.g. Mdchen, Gebude,
Messer, Kissen.
-s is used with many recent loan-words from English or French: Chef(s),
Hotel(s), Restaurant(s), Team(s), Tunnel(s), and for abbreviations
like LKW(s) and for most words ending in a vowel other than unstressed -
e: Auto(s), Genie(s)
There are other possibilities and very occasional exceptions, but these rules
cover the vast majority of the nouns you will ever come across in German.

Ideally, you would learn the proper plural of nouns as you come across
them, but since this may not be practical if your priority is to communicate
as much as possible in a short time, you will, once again, be better
off guessing.

HOW TO USE THESE RULES-OF-THUMB

FOR GUESSING GERMAN PLURALS
Learning off precise plurals should also be low priority when compared to
learning new vocabulary or more important aspects of grammar.

This is another situation where I can confirm from personal experience that
Germans will understand you perfectly well if you use the wrong plural. Just
like if a beginner English learner said to you that he saw six mouses, it
would sound a little weird, but you would understand it no problem.

In an academic examination you would lose points for writing down the
wrong plural; however, with human beings you will gain points for actually
saying something, rather than keeping your mouth shut for fear of saying it
wrong.

Based on the statistics above, you have a pretty decent chance at

guessing the correct plural! The most common ending is -e, so try this
one first. If the singular already ends in -e, it is slightly more likely to
be feminine so add an -n.

Use this rule of thumb, then try to learn the above list, and finally get
feedback from natives and spend more time reading, and you will quickly
see the exceptions.

As always, this is not a perfect solution, but saying a word in what sounds
like plural will get you further. The context and use of numbers
or die (genderless plural article, even though its the same as the feminine
article) will make it much clearer that you mean plural.
This blog post is an extract from my language hacking guide Why
German is Easy. Pick up your own copy here!