Animals and plants

Almost every German word for a young animal is neuter and ends in -chen or is simply neuter to begin with: das Kätzchen, das Kalb, das Fohlen, das Lamm, das Küken. That is the same rule that makes das Mädchen neuter, and it is one of the tidier corners of German gender. Animal noises are worth a line because they are conventional rather than natural: a German dog says wau wau, a cockerel kikeriki, a frog quak. The verbs are equally fixed — bellen, miauen, wiehern, muhen — and using the wrong one is as odd in German as it is in English.