this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (50 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (9 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Because we already had a word for "computer" (literally: calculator) which had the male article so when we started using the English word "computer" we kept the article :)

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