10mo ago

English may be a hot mess but at least we don't have to worry about this nonsense

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While gendered nouns are stupid, I at least appreciate Italian because you can just learn the word and get its gender from the end part of the word. In German, however, it's completely random and you have to learn the gender with the word.
- I don't know what you're on about. It's "die Waschmaschine" (washing machine, female), "das Waschmittel" (laundry detergent, neutral) and "der Trockner" (dryer, male).
  Pretty self explanatory /s
  
  I feel violated in 3 languages
  
  And after going on Die Toilette (female toilet), you use Das Spulbecken (neutral washbasin) and stand in front of Der Spiegel (male mirror).
  Despite accepting this all as perfectly normal, conservatives still manage to make a stink when someone writes or speaks in a way that addresses two different genders :-S
  
  And then there's also the fabolous gender swap in the kitchen:
  You walk into Die Küche(female kitchen) and after that you come out of Der Küche(male kitchen).
  
  TIL In french, we have un amour, single form masculin that turn feminin in the plural form.
  
  Das Mädchen (girl, neutral)
  
  That's because of the so called "Dimitutiv". What it does is basically, it say that the object in queue is smaller version of it. Some examples:
  Der Baum - Das Bäumchen
  Der Junge - Das Jüngchen
  It's always neutral. The original word is "Die Magd" and the Dimitutiv is Mädchen.
  
  Also, das Mädchen is just a cute/small Made (maggot).
  
  Yeah. I have no clue why it's the #standard word" but yes.
  
  It's exactly the same in french, I wonder how closely the genders of random things align between the two languages.
  
  And of course this is reformed German to make it easierish
- To be fair most French words are like what you're describing in Italian. Why does German even have gendered nouns?
  
  Damit andere Länder nichts verstehen können.
  
  Länder:innen
  
  Well that clears that up, thanks!
- Portuguese and Spanish also have that, to a certain degree, but there are some "trap words", like mapa (map), which is masculine, and a number of words that don't end with a/o to easily guess.
  
  And words that are feminine but are still used with 'el' and 'un' because they start with a stressed a

358 comments