From my non-native friends, I gather that one of the big problems in learning is grammatical gender. Either you have to learn the concept completely if you come from, say, English, or you at least have to learn the genders of the German words.

While native speakers usually have a good grasp on this, there's a particular word which I see used wrong a lot. That word is "Schild". If you know the word, just think about

a) what it means

b) what its gender is

c) what its plural is .

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Did you do it?

If you know the word, you probably said that it means "sign" as in "street sign", that it's neutral as in "das Schild" and that its plural is "Die Schilder".

However, there's another correct answer here. "Schild" can also mean shield, and in that case, it's "Der Schild" with the plural "Die Schilde".

Note that these are not interchangeable. If you want to talk about shields, you have to use the masculine one. This is something I see native speakers get wrong a lot.

A word that's even more fun in my opinion is "Band". Again, think about it

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If we allow a little cheating, Band works in all three genders and in four varieties:

a) "Der Band/Die Bände" meaning a volume (of a book)

b) "Die Band/Die Bands" meaning band (yeah this is just stolen from English and pronounced like the English word)

c) "Das Band/Die Bänder" meaning strip of fabric (and dozens of other things)

d) "Das Band/Die Bande" meaning bonds, both literally and metaphorically

That one native speakers don't seem to get wrong as much, curiously.