What are German articles?

Answer 1

Presuming you are referring to the language and grammar, then you mean the definite article (the) and the indefinite article (a or an) which proceed nouns.

In German, nouns can have one of three different genders, thus the articles vary according to gender:

In the singular, der, die and das are the masculine, feminine and neuter definite articles respectively, whilst ein, eine and ein are the equivalent.

Note that these are the Nominative forms. In German, there are a further three cases, which a noun can take and these are Accusative, Genitive and Dative. According to the case, the endings for each article may change:

DEFINITE ARTICLE:

Masculine:

N. der

A. den

G. des

D. dem

Feminine:

N. die

A. die

G. der

D. der

Neuter:

N. das

A. das

G. des

D. dem

INDEFINITE ARTICLE:

Masculine:

N. ein

A. einen

G. eines

D. einem

Feminine:

N. eine

A. eine

G. einer

D. einer

Neuter:

N. ein

A. ein

G. eines

D. einem

In the plural, all nouns are preceded by the definite article die in all cases but the Dative, which is den. Just as in English, there is no indefinite article in the plural, e.g. 'a son' and 'sons' in English; 'ein Sohn' and 'Söhne' in German.