Also I’m learning French and everything has a gender but I don’t see any pattern to it at all. Pizza is female, books are male, a suitcase is female, hats are male and so on.
Also in French, the names of numbers go absolutely mental once you go above about 50. That’s got nothing to do with gender but I want to complain it whenever I can.
German is so weird. They came up with the concept of a neutral gender, but objects that obviously have no real gender (tables, boxes, sunglasses) don’t use neuter.
Like, what’s the process when they create a new word.
Mädchen is a diminutive, and all diminutives are grammatically neutral.
It’s the same in Dutch btw, and my girlfriend who is learning Dutch is frequently abusing this as a cheat code: whenever she doesn’t know the gender of a word, she’ll just use the diminutive and it will automatically be neutral.
In German:
Man = male (der Mann)
Woman = female (die Frau)
Boy = male (der Junge)
Girl = neutral (das Mädchen)
No idea why lol.
Also I’m learning French and everything has a gender but I don’t see any pattern to it at all. Pizza is female, books are male, a suitcase is female, hats are male and so on.
Also in French, the names of numbers go absolutely mental once you go above about 50. That’s got nothing to do with gender but I want to complain it whenever I can.
German is so weird. They came up with the concept of a neutral gender, but objects that obviously have no real gender (tables, boxes, sunglasses) don’t use neuter.
Like, what’s the process when they create a new word.
“Computer”… hmm, I think it’s female.
Nah, it’s neuter.
You guys are idiots, he’s obviously male!
Oh yeah, Gunther is right! Look at him!
Mädchen is a diminutive, and all diminutives are grammatically neutral.
It’s the same in Dutch btw, and my girlfriend who is learning Dutch is frequently abusing this as a cheat code: whenever she doesn’t know the gender of a word, she’ll just use the diminutive and it will automatically be neutral.
I just might have just learned smth about my native language.