German words ending in -ung

A noun built with -ung is die. The suffix has no second case to learn.

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

-ung is a suffix, not a sound a word happens to end on. German builds it from a verb: wohnen becomes die Wohnung, prüfen becomes die Prüfung, einladen becomes die Einladung. The suffix is what makes the noun, and the suffix is feminine, so the noun is feminine.

That is why this one is safe in a way that most gender advice is not. You are not learning a tendency with a list of traps behind it. You are learning that a piece of German grammar has a gender, and that anything built with it inherits it.

What the rule does not cover is a word that ends in those three letters without being built that way. Der Sprung and der Schwung come off springen and schwingen by a much older process, one that changes the vowel of the verb instead of adding anything to it, and der Ursprung is Sprung with a prefix in front. All three are masculine. None of them turns up in this deck and none is an exception, because the rule was never about them. If you can see a verb with -ung stuck on the end of it, you are looking at the suffix.

The practical value is that -ung words are everywhere in the paperwork half of the language. Registration, appointment, application, invoice, apology. If you live in Germany you meet a dozen of them before breakfast, and now they are all die.

Worked examples

die Anmeldung registration
die Wohnung flat
die Rechnung invoice
die Entschuldigung apology
die Verspätung delay

Measured on this deck

100% of the 116 nouns ending in -ung are die

116 nouns in this deck end in -ung. All 116 are die, so the 100 percent below is a count and not a rounding.

die Anmeldung die Anmeldungen
die Einladung die Einladungen
die Entschuldigung die Entschuldigungen
die Führung die Führungen
die Kleidung die Kleidungen
die Lösung die Lösungen
die Ordnung die Ordnungen
die Prüfung die Prüfungen
die Rechnung die Rechnungen
die Wohnung die Wohnungen
die Zeitung die Zeitungen
die Ahnung die Ahnungen

and 104 more in the deck. Try the drill.

What a card looks like

Anmeldung

Try it

The drill below mixes -ung words in with everything else, so this rule will not carry you through it. Good. A rule that fires on every card is not telling you anything about the card.

Wohnung