Questions & Answers about Der Hund ist fett.
German gives every noun a grammatical gender: masculine, feminine, or neuter.
- Hund is masculine, so in the nominative case (here, as the subject), it takes the article der.
- Feminine nouns would use die, and neuter nouns would use das in the nominative.
You simply have to learn the gender together with each noun:
- der Hund (masc.) – the dog
- die Katze (fem.) – the cat
- das Pferd (neut.) – the horse
In German, all nouns are capitalized, no matter where they appear in the sentence.
So you write:
- Der Hund ist fett.
- Ich sehe den Hund.
Even in the middle of a sentence, Hund stays capitalized because it is a noun. Adjectives like fett and verbs like ist are not capitalized (unless they begin a sentence or are part of a title).