German plural nouns

Question

l wonder, as a beginner in German, there's nouns separated by genders for the same as in die Katze /der Kater or die lernerin / der lerner. My question is what the plural form is for all, if ever, that includes both genders like simply saying cats in case there's like 2 cats out there one being female and one being male? I mean are the plurals also based on gender of the name? As in "die Lerner and die Lernerin-in"? l am confused.

Answer 1

The generic term is used to build the plural. Often, that's the masculine term. For example for professions. It's called generic masculinum.

But for example die Katze is a good counter example for generic femininum.

Ich mag meine drei Katzen. Es sind zwei Kater und eine Katze.

As you can see the plural of die Katze is used to describe the whole pack. But the plural of der Kater is used to tell it's two male cats in particular. An we have to tell from context that eine Katze is a female cat, and not one of unspecified gender.

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In general, noun gender in German does not tell the gender of people or animals or plants. That's something you have to get used to as an English speaker. Only if the gender of the person or animal or plant is important, we mark it by using a different noun or by telling it explicitely.

Siehst du den Baum da? Er ist schon tausend Jahre alt. Es ist eine Linde, und sie heißt Kaiser-Lothar-Linde.

See what going on? The very same tree is first an er, than an es and finally a sie.

But we haven't yet told whether that tree is male or female! (Actually, this species is hermaphroditic. But German grammar does not care about that.)

Answer 2

This can actually be a loaded question. Traditionally, there's something called the generisches Maskulinum. This means in short, that for individuals whose gender is unknown or not relevant you would use the male form, as a kind of generalization. "Der Student" can be specifically a male student, or a student in general, regardless of gender.

The generisches Maskulinum is traditionally also used for mixed groups. So, "die Studenten" could be specifically a group of male student, or just a group of students. "Die Studentinnen" are specifically a group of female students.

But for some decades now, this tradition got challenged more and more. Many people consider it deprecatory to basically only mention the male individuals and assume that everybody else is tacitely included. This goes for female individuals as well as for anybody else who doesn't identify as male. It's seen as kind of "the males are the important ones that need to be explicitly mentioned, everybody else is gracefully allowed to consider themselves included". This is what the verb "mitmeinen", "to also mean" means:

Wenn ich "die Studenten" sage, sind "die Studentinnen" natürlich mitgemeint.
When I speak of "the (male) students", "the (female) students" are of course meant as well.

Because of that, people try to find more inclusive plural forms. There are several, not to say a lot, of suggestions. Some of those are

• listing both / all genders, like "Studentinnen und Studenten" (the gentleman lets the lady go first, compare "Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren")
• add the genders in brackets, like "Studenten (m / w / d)", with the letters denoting "männlich", "weiblich" and "divers" (the latter for "anybody else"). This is often seen in job offers and the like.
• a generisches Femininum, so that the female plural is seen as encompassing everybody else as well
• derivates from the verb like "Studierende" ("those who study").

But not everybody is very fond of those proposed changes. For example, people may fulminate in comment sections that in their eyes this "genderization" is not only completely unnecessary, but is also unaesthetic or even "destroys the German language". Compare people using "wokeness" as a derogatory term.

Regarding the two examples you mentioned, "der Lerner" and "die Lernerin" are not too commonly used in everyday German. As a native speaker, I actually had to look them up. Mostly, we would use a noun from the context of school or education like "der Schüler" / "die Schülerin" or "der Student" / "die Studentin". Or (see above) we would use a derivate from the verb, like "die Lernenden" ("those who learn / study"). The plural of "der Lerner" and "die Lernerin" is, according to Wiktionary, actually "die Lerner" and is used regardless of gender.

Cats are interesting in this regard because this is one of the not too many cases of a traditional "generisches Femininum". Similar to English, "eine Katze" can mean specifically a female cat, or just a cat regardless of gender. "Die Katzen" could be a group of female cats, or just a group of cats. For tomcats, we'd use "der Kater" in singular and "die Kater" in plural.