I’ve found that most of the time, just pick the most sexist answer you can think of, and you’ll typically be right!
I really don’t like gendered languages.
I only studied french for a short time, but I feel like that really doesn’t work for french:
- chemisier, blouse, is masculine
- ceinture, belt, is feminine
Those were the two onces I could remember like this half a year after ending my french studies, but could be that those are only two uncommon counterexamples.
Also, both of these are what you would “expect” in German (die Bluse, der Gürtel)
Well it works for this example, because lave-vaisselle is feminine. The root vasselle (dishes) is feminine.
vaiselle is actually inhereting its gender in an unrelated manner.
It comes from Latin vāscellum which is a Neuter noun.
But the specific form that gave rise to vaiselle was the collective plural of that noun vāscella. source
And it’s a common pattern that in vulgar latin, (what gave rise to french), collective plural nouns were interpreted as feminine. I think this is a general tendency and unrelated to the noun’s meaning. The reason often given is that neuter plural endings and feminine singular endings were the same in Latin.
BTW; this is also the latin root of the english word vessel.
(PS: I agree with you that gender in language is problematic and I prefer non gendered as well).
Une lave-vaisselle totally does not work.
Interesting how those words are reversed as far as genders go in Spanish:
- Chemisier = Blusa, feminine
- Ceinture = Cinturón, masculine
Despite both languages having common Latin roots.
You’ll be right 50% of the times. Or 33% in german. And it doesn’t match between languages. Like, “cat” is a she in german and a he in french. Often synonyms have different genders : une lettre/un courrier (both mean a mail).
I think the issue is that you are searching your mind for correlations between gender and sexism-related, which is often easier than searching for non-correlation. If I ask you “quick, think of a singer that wears leather”, you’ll find one instantly. But if I ask “quick, find a singer that doesn’t wear leather” it takes a while, even though there more of them.
If you want a better impression of the phenomenon, open a dictionary, go over words one by one and count the points.
And also “organ” (the instrument) in french is male when singular and female when plural. “C’est un bel orgue” and “Ce sont de belles orgues”.
That’s what I love about my native Hungarian, even pronouns are ungendered.
Everything else is stupid complicated though. We have tonal harmony to worry about instead.
There was a whole battle about whether covid was masculine or feminine. I think feminine won, probably because it sucked.
Mark Twain also struggled with language
To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female—tomcats included, of course; a person’s mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and NOT according to the sex of the individual who wears it—for in Germany all the women wear either male heads or sexless ones; a person’s nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven’t any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.
I asked my Francophone buddy that grew up in backwoods Quebec how the hell he kept it all in his head. He said that he never bothered.
If it had an “e” on the end, he just assumed it was feminine.
If he was drunk, he didn’t give a single flying tabernak.
It’s likely the same as English spelling. Just years and years of repeated exposure, and you eventually pick up most of it through osmosis
How does anyone manage to keep allll the words pronunciation and spelling they know is already amazing, craming pronouns on top of that isn’t much worse
It is not a problem for native speakers though. These kinds of things are only something you think about if you are learning it as a second language later in life. If you grew up with them you just aborb the information and use it without thinking about it.
Like adjective order in English. If you point it out to the average native speaker more than likely they won’t even know they do it.
There’s a pattern to it. I don’t know what it is, and I’m not sure anyone knows consciously. But for example, when creating new words (eg. fantasy/sci-fi context) there usually isn’t any confusion as to what that word’s gender will be, it just sounds bad with the wrong pronoun. There are a few exceptions of course, same as “autobus” and “avion” which technically have a gender assigned but people toss a coin every time.
In French, it’s ‘le pénis,’ but nobody says that. ‘Dick,’ is feminine (la bite.)
Also, ‘vagina’ is masculine, but ‘pussy’ is feminine, because if you were to say ‘le chat’ it would mean a cat, but by feminising the word, it becomes ‘la chatte,’ meaning pussy.
As someone who grew up Anglophone, I actually find gendered languages much more precise. On the other hand, in order to make yourself understood one must have a rich vocabulary, because the definitions of words are often more narrow than in English.
And don’t even get me started on phrasal verbs… English is messy.
I actually find gendered languages much more precise.
Just never ask a group of Germans what the singular article of Nutella is.
Put some yogurt on that!
You’d better back down before this blows up or i break down
Pure poetry.
I don’t get the weirdness of phrasal verbs? It’s a basic staple of every Indoeuropean language to generate verbs by tacking on prepositions. Ok, it’s a bit weird to use prepositions after the word, but that’s just standard Germanic separable verbs that are a bit regulized. So what?
They’re just so ubiquitous in English. In my experience, people coming from the Romance languages have a very hard time with them, because most of the actions they describe are a single verb in their mother tongues. Imagine having to remember what two words mean, but then also having to remember that when you use the two words together, they form a distinct, sometimes even unrelated, meaning.
And there’s thousands.
Well, Romance languages have thousands, too, like e.g. French poser and sup-poser, dé-poser, re-poser, trans-poser, pro-poser, im-poser, ex-poser, pré-poser, anté-poser, op-poser, super-poser, com-poser, juxta-poser, ap-poser, dis-poser, postposer,
If I call up a random French or Spanish article on wikipedia, a decent amount, if not the majority of verbs (not counting auxilliary verbs) are compounds. Somehow Romance speakers seem to have lost the ability to spot them, a Mexican coworker of mine was absolutely convinced Spanish does not have compound verbs as well.
Oh – I see. The Romance prepositions have changed. Knowing Latin I cannot not recognise the loads of compound verbs, but with sur, de, derriere, travers, par, en, hors, avant and so on the compounds are not recognisable any longer and our poor Romance friends have to learn all the words by themselves instead of nice semilogical groups.
I would love to see that discuss
Sorry, I don’t understand what I am seeing here. Is that someone xeeting a screenshot of someone reporting to Duolingo that penis should be feminine, not masculine in Spanish?
Removed by mod
Yes, but what if you’re a man married to a man? Which one is the washing machine? 🤌
My body is a MACHINE that turns DIRTY things into CLEAN things. /skeleton-deadlift-meme
I am.
(j/k; I’m pretty poor at cleaning things.)
One of the few genders German and French agree on is that a machine is female.
So, if a man is considered to be a machine he is female in that field.
“Europeans solve trans bathroom problem, whoever does the laundry, pees in the ladies room”
The one that is sent from the future that consists of living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
How do you call a herd of washing machines?
remember to raise those washing machines and feed them the best laundry detergent you can! i recommend arm and hammer (partly because of the logo - the logo was used a lot in de leonism, and armand hammer supports socialism)
Bonjour
One of my languages has three genders for living creatures, and two genders for items. Those genders are all different from each other: humans and other living beings are male/female/living neutral, things are item neutral/item neutral. An item neutral plural is also used for groups of living beings, but not for all groups of items.
One item neutral singular can in some instances be used for a living being regardless of their gender. The other item neutral would be insulting if used about living beings, and especially dehumanising to humans (wish someone had told me this sooner).
I have no idea when to use which item neutral. Locals keep correcting me or almost imperceptibly wincing when I get it wrong, so when I want to sound more fluent I just use the item plural for singulars as well - it seems less annoying for some reason.
Oh, and for one of the item neutrals, if you accidentally use the other item neutral it means the plural of the first one. Kill me now, lol.
Which language is that?
Swedish. I have family there so I visit a lot, but I’m not completely fluent.
hey, atleast you dont have 14 noun cases.
In my language we have genders for every noun. But it is trivially deducted from the spelling/pronunciation of that noun.
Tell me the Gender of Nutella or Yogurt, then :)
Nutella – female, Yogurt – male.
Nah pal it’s le Nutella. Don’t ask me why cause I don’t know. The word ending in ‘a’ isn’t a valid argument because you don’t drink une Fanta do you? Or do you?
Is the gender of yogurt under debate in Germany? I am only aware of Nutella and butter. Yogurt was always male.
According to Duden, Joghurt may have any gender. I agree with you though that it should be der Joghurt. Edit: It seems like die/das Joghurt is mostly used outside Germany.
What is it with the Austrians always stirring up shit?
My two main fluent languages are not gendered. It was such a weird concept when I started to learn French.
no rules, no sens, only disdain
L’Académie Française existed since the 18th century to make the language too complex “for the common and the women”
Is that when they decided to make counting past 70 complicated?
That’s actually older than French itself - a relic from Gaulish.
TIL, thanks
no, I’m afraid I could not shift the blame on this one. Particularly when french speakers in Switzerland and Belgium show alternatives for a long time
That’s four goddamn numbers in a row!
so much pain
Same as italian
And for some reason it seems to be quite jarring for french native speakers if somebody uses the wrong gender. I have tried to learn french for like 10 years and I have received absolutely no feelings about either the right or wrong genders. Both of them always sound just as fine.
la baguette? le baguette? No difference. But that’s how it works of course.
It’s the same gender than all machines, which is obviously feminine.
There’s no fixed rule for this but if a noun ends with a consonant it’s probably masculine and if it ends with a vowel it’s possibly feminine. Again, not a consistent rule and it will not work for everything, but if you must take a guess, this might help, or not.
Now this reminds me of Sebastian Marx and his videos on French. Like this one on pronunciation.
