German words ending in -anz
A noun ending in -anz is die, as long as -anz is an ending and not the whole word.
-anz is the Latin ending -antia, which English writes as -ance. Distanz is distance, Eleganz is elegance, Toleranz is tolerance, Substanz is substance. The suffix is feminine and the noun it builds is feminine with it. No exceptions. Latin gave German -ion, -ität and the bare -tät on the same terms, and every one of them is die.
The one thing to watch is length. In a word like Tanz, those three letters are not a suffix at all, they are most of a short native stem, and der Tanz is masculine. Counting syllables is the test that works. A word of a single syllable is a native stem that happens to end in those letters, while the suffix rides on the back of a longer borrowed word and takes the stress itself. Dis-TANZ is the suffix. Tanz is the whole word.
-enz is the same story with a different vowel, from Latin -entia. If you know one you know the other.
Worked examples
- die Distanz distance
- die Eleganz elegance not in the deck, unchecked
- die Toleranz tolerance not in the deck, unchecked
Measured on this deck
100% of the 1 nouns ending in -anz are die
This deck reaches the ending with 1 noun. That is too small a sample to prove anything by itself, and it does not have to: it agrees with the rule at 100 percent, and the rule is carried by the language rather than by that one figure.
- die Distanz die Distanzen
Looks like it, is not
This word ends in the same three letters without carrying the suffix. It is a short native stem, not a Latin ending, so it is not an exception to the rule above.
- der Tanz die Tänze
What a card looks like
Distanz
Try it
The drill below is the mixed deck, and no -anz word is in it. Save the rule for the letters when you meet them, and read the look-alike above first: it is a stem, not the ending.
Wohnung