German words ending in -ion

A noun ending in -ion is die, and you probably already know what it means.

die Oma the character this deck pins every die-word on

-ion came into German from Latin, and it came in feminine. It never changed. Information, Situation, Diskussion, Produktion, Reaktion, Religion, Tradition: the ending arrived with the word, and the gender arrived with the ending.

You can read most of these words on sight, so the only thing standing between you and using them is the article, and the article is die. That is a large slice of the abstract nouns on a B1 syllabus, settled in one line.

The trap here is meaning, not gender. Rezeption is a hotel reception desk, not a party. Pension is a guesthouse as often as it is a pension, and Halbpension is half board. Take the article for free and check the meaning anyway.

Where -ion breaks in this deck, the cause is origin. A Greek word is not a Latin noun in -tion whatever letters it ends in, and it came in neuter rather than feminine. The exception list below has the detail. Greek is not the only way out of the rule either. Der Spion, der Skorpion and der Champion end in the same three letters and are masculine, and none of them is the Latin -tion noun the rule is about.

Stress helps in speech. German puts it on the ending itself, so the word runs to a beat that English does not. Hearing that beat is what should trigger the rule when someone is talking at you.

Worked examples

die Information information
die Situation situation
die Rezeption reception desk
die Halbpension half board
die Diskussion discussion

Measured on this deck

96% of the 25 nouns ending in -ion are die

24 nouns ending in -ion in this deck are die and one is not, which puts the ending at 96 percent. Guess die and you will be right nearly every time, which for an ending this common is a large amount of German settled.

die Halbpension
die Information die Informationen
die Rezeption die Rezeptionen
die Portion die Portionen
die Situation die Situationen
die Aktion die Aktionen
die Diskussion die Diskussionen
die Generation die Generationen
die Gratulation die Gratulationen
die Infektion die Infektionen
die Integration die Integrationen
die Kommunikation die Kommunikationen

and 12 more in the deck. Try the drill.

The ones that break it

One noun in this deck ends in -ion and is not die. Hold it as vocabulary rather than as a hole in the rule, because that is what it is.

das Stadion die Stadien

What a card looks like

Information

Try it

-ion does turn up in the slice below, mixed in with cards it has nothing to say about. These are the words you can already read, so they should be the fastest cards in the deck to clear.

Wohnung