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The purpose of this website is to calculate article and adjective endings in the German language, given the gender and case of the noun.

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In a sentence in English the same form of the article is used regardless of its position in the sentence or the noun with which it is associated. This is not true in a German sentence; the form of the article depends on the gender of the noun and the case - the function of the noun within the sentence.

Thus in the English sentence

        A dog chases a cat

both nouns use the article "a", and if the sentence is changed to

        A cat chases a dog

both articles are still "a".

However in the equivalent German sentence the noun for the creature doing the chasing will be in the nominative case while the noun for the creature being chased will be in the accusative case. Also in German a dog's gender is masculine while a cat's gender is feminine, so the first sentence becomes:

        Ein Hund verfolgt eine Katze    (verfolgen - to chase)

while the second sentence becomes

        Eine Katze verfolgt einen Hund

OK so far? It gets worse.

If there is an adjective associated with the noun then the letters at the end of the adjective (the adjectival ending) will also change depending on the article, the gender of the noun and the case taken by the noun.

So the English sentence

        A black dog chases a white cat

uses the same words for "a", "black" and "white" as

        A white cat chases a black dog

But in German the first sentence becomes

        Ein schwarzer Hund verfolgt eine weiße Katze

but the articles and adjectives change in the second sentence

        Eine weiße Katze verfolgt einen schwarzen Hund

Just in case this is all too simple for you, in some instances an "s" or an "n" is also added to the end of the noun, but only if the noun doesn't already end with this letter (try genitive case and neuter gender or dative case and plural gender with the calculator).

As there are 4 options for gender (3 different genders plus plural), 3 options for article (rule for direct article, rule for indirect article and no article) and 4 cases in German, this means there are 48 combinations to learn. Alternatively click on either the [Basic Calculator] or the [Advanced Calculator] button, enter the article, gender and case and let this web page give you the result by clicking the [Calculate] button.

There are two versions of the calculator. The Basic Calculator gives the options of selecting the indefinite, definite or no article, the gender and the case. The Advanced Calculator gives the options of selecting from a list of Determiners and also allows the case to be set by selecting a Preposition.

The calculator requires permission for Java applets to run on your PC.