Grammar
En or et? How to guess a Danish noun's gender
Published 12 September 2026
It's dag [daːˀɣ] for "a day" but år [ɔːˀr] for "a year", and nothing in either word warns you. Still, guessing is not hopeless. Say en every time and you will be right about 71% of the time, and a handful of endings push that to near certainty for whole groups of words. Here are the rules that work, and the ones that don't.
The default
When in doubt, say en
Danish has two genders. Grammar books call them common and neuter; learners call them en-words and et-words, after the word for "a" that goes with each. We counted every noun the app teaches: 487 of 689 are en-words and 202 are et-words.
So en is the right bet when you have nothing else to go on. It's also the less jarring mistake. Danes hear learners say en hus all the time and understand perfectly. You still want to get it right, because the gender decides the ending for "the" and the form of every adjective in front of the noun (more on that below).
The hundred most common nouns, each with its gender, are on the list of common Danish nouns. The rest of this page is about guessing well when you meet one that isn't.
Endings
Some endings settle it
The end of a word is the best clue Danish gives you. These are counted over the same nouns as above, so the numbers are what you will actually meet, not what a grammar book promises.
| Ending | Examples | In our list | Gender |
|---|---|---|---|
| -ing | regering, udvikling, mening | 38 of 38 are en | en |
| -hed | mulighed, frihed, nyhed | 16 of 16 are en | en |
| -ion | situation, information, station | 10 of 10 are en | en |
| -else | forbindelse, uddannelse, følelse | 17 of 18 are en | en, with one famous exception |
| -skab | selskab, venskab, ægteskab | 5 of 7 are et | mostly et |
| -um, -ment | museum, element | a few, all et | et |
The exception in the -else row is værelse [ˈʋaːɐlsə] "a room", which is et værelse. It is common enough that you will need it in your first week of looking for a flat, so learn it as a pair.
The -skab row is a lean, not a rule: et venskab "a friendship", but en videnskab "a science".
Compounds
In a compound, the last word decides
Danish builds long nouns by joining short ones, and the gender always comes from the final part. skole [skoːlə] "school" is an en-word, so en sommerskole is too. hus [ˈhuˀs] "house" is an et-word, so et sommerhus follows it.
This is the most useful rule on the page, because Danish is full of compounds. Every short noun you learn properly with its gender quietly teaches you the gender of dozens of longer ones.
Meaning
Rules about meaning are weaker than they look
You will read that people and animals are en-words. Mostly true: en mand, en kvinde, en hund. Then you meet barn [barn], "a child", and et menneske, "a human being", two of the commonest nouns in the language, and both are et-words.
Our advice: use meaning as a tie-breaker only. Endings and compounds are far more reliable, and for everything else the honest answer is to learn the noun with its en or et attached, as one unit.
Try it
Five words, thirty seconds
Guess the gender of each before you read the answers below.
- befolkning "population"
- kærlighed "love"
- museum "museum"
- sommerhus "summer house"
- bil "car"
Answers: en befolkning (-ing), en kærlighed (-hed), museum [muˈsɛːɔm] is et museum (-um), et sommerhus (compound, from et hus), and bil [biːl] is en bil, which no rule predicts but the default gets right.
Four out of five from rules alone. The app shows the gender on every noun card, so the fifth kind gets learned as you go. Learn nouns with their gender
Why it matters
Gender changes more than the little word in front
Get the gender wrong and two other things go wrong with it. "The" is an ending in Danish, -en or -et depending on gender, and adjectives add a -t in front of et-words. Both are covered on the noun and adjective pages: see how definite forms follow the gender and how adjectives agree with en- and et-words.
Learn each noun with its en or et
689 nouns in the app, every one with its gender, in the order Danish uses them.