German nouns ending in -ist
-ist is masculine: people who do something, like der Tourist and der Polizist. The woman is die Touristin.
Say the article and the noun together. The ending is a hint, not a word.
On the 81 common nouns with this ending in the frequency list behind these rules, 91.4% take der. We label that “almost always”. The count is from german-nouns (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0). It is not an exam pass rate.
Exceptions in this rule
- die Frist
Learn the exceptions as pairs. The ending is still worth using for every other noun.
Examples the course uses
- der Tourist
- der Polizist
- der Journalist
In this dictionary
None of the course nouns use this ending yet.