German words ending in -anz
A noun ending in -anz is die, as long as -anz is an ending and not the whole word.
-anz is the Latin ending -antia, which English writes as -ance. Distanz is distance, Eleganz is elegance, Toleranz is tolerance, Substanz is substance. The suffix is feminine and the noun it builds is feminine with it. No exceptions.
The one thing to watch is length. In a word like Tanz, those three letters are not a suffix at all, they are most of a short native stem, and der Tanz is masculine. Counting syllables is the test that works. A word of a single syllable is a native stem that happens to end in those letters, while the suffix rides on the back of a longer borrowed word and takes the stress itself. Dis-TANZ is the suffix. Tanz is the whole word.
-enz is the same story with a different vowel, from Latin -entia. If you know one you know the other.
Worked examples
- die Distanz distance
- die Eleganz elegance not in the deck, unchecked
- die Toleranz tolerance not in the deck, unchecked
Measured on this deck
100% of the 1 nouns ending in -anz are die
This deck reaches the ending with 1 noun. That is too small a sample to prove anything by itself, and it does not have to: it agrees with the rule at 100 percent, and the rule is carried by the language rather than by that one figure.
- die Distanz die Distanzen
Looks like it, is not
This word ends in the same three letters without carrying the suffix. It is a short native stem, not a Latin ending, so it is not an exception to the rule above.
- der Tanz die Tänze
What a card looks like
Distanz
Try it
The drill below is the mixed deck, and no -anz word is in it. Save the rule for the letters when you meet them, and read the look-alike above first: it is a stem, not the ending.
Wohnung