German words ending in -ment
A noun ending in -ment is das, and then there is Moment.
-ment came into German from Latin -mentum, mostly through French, and it arrived neuter. Dokument, Instrument, Medikament, Argument, Experiment, Apartment. English borrowed the same ending, so the words are usually transparent and the only thing you have to add is das.
The exception is der Moment, and it is unlucky, because it is one of the first words a beginner learns. Learn it as a word with an article attached rather than as a hole in the rule. There is also a das Moment in technical German, meaning a factor or a force in physics, but that is a curiosity rather than something a B1 exam will ask you about.
Take one more with it. Der Zement, the building material, is masculine too. Those two are the whole list at this level. If the noun ends in -ment and it is neither the one about time nor the one about concrete, das is the safe answer.
Worked examples
- das Dokument document
- das Instrument instrument
- das Medikament medication
- das Apartment flat
Measured on this deck
80% of the 5 nouns ending in -ment are das
4 nouns ending in -ment in this deck are das and 1 is not, which puts the ending at 80 percent. The miss is the common word, so it gets named here rather than averaged away.
- das Apartment die Apartments
- das Instrument die Instrumente
- das Medikament die Medikamente
- das Dokument die Dokumente
The ones that break it
One noun in this deck ends in -ment and is not das. Read it as vocabulary, not as evidence against the rule.
- der Moment die Momente
What a card looks like
Dokument
Try it
The drill below is the mixed deck rather than an -ment set. There is an -ment noun in it, sitting among endings this page has said nothing about.
Wohnung