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Has anybody come across reliable ways to know if a masculine noun is weak or not?

Der Präsident... Wir brauchen einen neuen Präsidenten.
Der Held... Gotham braucht einen Helden.

I have noticed that many weak masculine nouns tend to end with an 'e' when in nominative.

der Kunde, der Junge, der Name, der Bote....

I have also read about nouns coming from adjectives also being quite often the culprits for weak nouns.

Any other ideas?

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  • I guess you should rather take a look at the genitive ending (des Präsidenten, des Helden – des Namens, des Glaubens) – Em1 Apr 1 '14 at 20:13
  • How does that help me know if its a weak noun to begin with though? Your idea seems to extend my point one further, by saying that nominative masculine nouns, ending with -e, tens to also get a -ns in the genitive. Or am I missing something? – n1k31t4 Apr 1 '14 at 20:26
  • Not quite. My point actually was that the genitive case is clearly distinguishable. However, if the link in the answer below is correct, you just take a look at the declension table and look for 7 -n endings (still, they don't say that the nominative singular must end in -e, for instance Astronaut). Actually, in conclusion that seconds my first comment. – Em1 Apr 1 '14 at 20:55
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This page says that nearly all common masculine nouns ending in -e are weak (with the exception of Käse), though some retain their genetive -s ending after the -n-. That sounds like a pretty reliable criterion.

This page gives some (non-reliable, but helpful) categories for weak nouns.

All the adjectives that form masculine weak nouns I can think of right now end in -e, so I'm not sure if that is useful as an extra criterion.

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  • Please try to summarize the main points of links you provided, in case they go offline. for more information, see How to Answer – Vogel612 Apr 2 '14 at 11:13

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