Every German noun has a gender, and you need it for almost every sentence. Practise the articles of 126 nouns you meet in your first months in Germany.
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German has three genders: masculine (der), feminine (die) and neuter (das). Gender belongs to the word, not to the thing: das Mädchen (the girl) is neuter, and der Löffel, die Gabel, das Messer (spoon, fork, knife) have three different genders. In the plural every noun takes die: die Tische, die Frauen, die Kinder.
Always learn a new noun with its article and plural, for example der Tisch, die Tische. Saying the article out loud each time is the fastest way to remember it.
Compound nouns take the gender of the last part: das Haus → das Krankenhaus; der Schrank → der Kühlschrank.
The article changes with the case (der becomes den in the accusative), and adjective endings depend on it, so a wrong gender spreads through the whole sentence. Native speakers will understand you anyway, but getting the articles right is one of the things A1 and A2 exams check. Keep practising alongside the A1 lessons.
There are helpful rules for many word endings (for example -ung is always die and -chen is always das), but many common nouns have no rule. Learn each noun with its article.
Always die, whatever the gender in the singular: der Tisch, die Tische; das Kind, die Kinder.
Nouns ending in -chen are always neuter, even when they refer to a person. The grammatical gender comes from the ending.
