German nouns ending in -ion
-ion (-tion, -sion) is feminine. Many of these words look like English: die Information.
Say the article and the noun together. The ending is a hint, not a word.
On the 347 common nouns with this ending in the frequency list behind these rules, 98.3% take die. We label that “always”. The count is from german-nouns (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0). It is not an exam pass rate.
Exceptions in this rule
- der Spion
- der Champion
- das Stadion
- das Dominion
- der Orion
Learn the exceptions as pairs. The ending is still worth using for every other noun.
Examples the course uses
- die Information
- die Portion
- die Kaution