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.
Dogs are male? In my language dogs are female. So I guess there is no standard for gendered language.
Dunno about German but in french dogs are male or female depending on their actual gender (obviously the female word has been adopted as a slur towards women, to be fair sometimes the masculine also is used that way for men).
The male word is also used as slur for men in Québec. It’s usually accompanied by copious religious profanity and a few tasteful adjectives.
- C’est un ostie de câlisse de chien sale à marde, Tabarnak!
In German, dogs are male by default (der Hund can be used as a generic term for both male and female dogs), but bitches are female (die Hündin). Cats are female by default (die Katze), but tomcats are male (der Kater).
We do not use Hündin as a slur for women, but Hund can be used as a slur for men.
It is said that when English went from old English (which was gendered) to modern English, part of the problem was that the genders of the Germanic roots didn’t match the genders of the French influences so the people chose to just skip it all together.
Basically the last good decision in the creation of English
There’s absolutely no standard. A common trope among language learners of gendered languages whose mother tongue is also gendered is that they always pick the wrong gender for everything.
Same as italian
I’m just happy that washing machine has the same gender in French as my language and not a different one
Here’s a simple trick:
Apply misogyny and sexism /s
Buuuut cars are a men thing aren’t they? And yet it’s la voiture… Curious…
If you can make mysoginistic jokes about it, then it works : men get in cars just like in women. => so it’s “la”
😏
on dit un char.
Cousiiiiiinnnnn ❤️
On va éviter le sujet des synonymes familiers du mot enfant en français de France hein, clin d’oeil bourrage du coude
See… You have to get into the mind of a straight man from the 1950s and ask yourself one of 2 questions: Is this a woman’s thing? Or would I fuck this thing? Cars are considered “beautiful” and “sexy” and therefore fuckable by a man. I hope this has been a good lesson in outrageous sexism.
So are washing machines, apparently.
Don’t put your dick in that
Help me, stepsister…
for I need to wash away my sins?
I would not fuck a chevy hhr. A subaru justy on the other hand…
Thoughts on Toyota Crown?
Only the older models. The new ones have those big, sexy cow lips and are frankly out of my league.
And yet ‘ship’ is masculine in French, despite even in genderless English being referred to by sailors throughout history as a ‘she’
But they still name ships with women’s names, I stopped thinking too hard about this…
It is masculine because a ship is full of seamen.
🥁🐍
La règle trente-trois, I see. Consider me enlightened!
Edit: merde non c’est la règle trente-quatre bordel de chiottes
Doesn’t work for le lave-linge though.
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.
You’d better back down before this blows up or i break down
Pure poetry.
back up - actual phrase
break up - actual phrase
Why no blow down?
I actually find gendered languages much more precise.
Just never ask a group of Germans what the singular article of Nutella is.
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?
I would love to see that discuss
Y’all would love Irish. There is no word for “yes” or “no”.
How do you say “no means no”
I’m a bit rusty but I think it’s “Feck’off ya’cunt”.
Only parents, priests, those in front of children or those in pleasant company say feck. We’re more or less married to the Aussies with our love of the vulgar words. 🇮🇪 ❤️ 🇦🇺
“Feck aff ye daft coont.”
Eh, that’s a great question. My Irish used to be good enough that I’d be able to answer that but I’m not sure what the direct translation would be. There is a word that’s very close to “no” which is “níl” (neel) but in general it’s short for “níl mé” (neel may - I am not).
In the present tense there is “tá” (taw) which is essentially short for “tá mé” (taw may - I am) but for example the answer to the question “Were you?” is “Ní raimh mé” (nee r-ow may) which is “I was not” but it is contextual. The pronunciation of “raimh” also varies by each of the 4 provinces along with every other word which is confusing as fuck. Some would say “rev” for “raimh”.
In general it’s the positive or negative of the verb though - were you? I was. Did you? I did. Will you? I will. Did she? She did etc.
Someone with better Irish may be along to hopefully make a show of me.
edit: Google translate says “ciallaíonn ní nach bhfuil” is “no means no” but there is no way in hell any actual Irish speaker would say those words when the context is so simple.
“ní nach bhfuil” (nee noch will) is “no is not”, kinda. ciallaíonn is “means” straight up though.
In general it’s the positive or negative of the verb though - were you? I was. Did you? I did. Will you? I will. Did she? She did etc.
So the verb has a negative declension, or is it just some kind of conjunction that negates the verb?
Either way, that’s kind of beautiful. English has a problem where one can ask a compound question, and replying “no” doesn’t clarify a damn thing. This would be impossible in Irish, since you’d have to pick one or some combination of questions to reply to, as the verb-form is required.
So the verb has a negative declension, or is it just some kind of conjunction that negates the verb?
It’s so long since I used declension that I honestly can’t remember it’s use but you repeat the verb but in the positive or negative form and there are differences if that makes sense?
Like “Do you understand?” is “I understand” and “I do not understand” is a little different.
I’m teaching my youngest lad Irish and I’ll regularly ask him “An dtuigeann tú” (on diggin too) and he’ll respond with “tuigim” (“tig-im” - “I understand” (which is strictly a contraction)).
edit: The negative would be “Ní thuigim” which we would pronounce as “nee higim” (I do not understand) so there’s a definite change in the word for the negative.
edit 2: The answers to “were you?” would be bhí mé “vee may” (I was) and Ní raimh mé “nee r-ow may” (I was not) so it is quite different to answer in the positive or negative.
This is a better response than I could have hoped for; consider my curiosity sated, and I am now fascinated. Thank you for sharing this.
You’re very welcome :)
How do you call a herd of washing machines?
On the phone?
you don’t. they call you.
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
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 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.
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.
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’s likely the same as English spelling. Just years and years of repeated exposure, and you eventually pick up most of it through osmosis
female of course
so much pain
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 godforsaken language is that?
Abyssal I assume.
So Luxembourgish?
Which language is that?
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?
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!
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.
English is such a poor language that they only have the article The and nouns without genders.
Seethe and cope.
My native language doesn’t have any articles and there is no distinction between he and she.
Japanese?
How progressive.
May I ask what language that may be?
So poor they held to sell off cases as well.
And they still have trouble learning it.
bullpies!
i don’t like English, but those are things it does right!
who the hell needs TWELVE definite articles?!
Speakers of enlightened languages?
For all of the shit people talk about the English language, this is a big thing I appreciate about it. What the hell was the point of even gendering random things from the start? In German, the main gendering are die, der, and das with das being gender neutral. I would like to see a world where in scenarios like that they just move everything to das.
I think it’s to make it less ambiguous.
In English you just use the same word and figure it out from context. Someone else gave some other Spanish examples but I like “right” (direction) = “la derecha” vs “right” (human rights) = “los derechos”.
Of course there’s still so many variants of meaning that grammatical gender doesn’t help much.
If you’re writing a poem in German, you can apparently switch the positions of the subject, object and indirect object without changing the meaning, since the gender and article of the word indicate whether it’s the subject (Nominativ), object (Akkusativ) or indirect object (Dativ). (e.g. subject: der Mann, object: den Mann, indirect object: dem Mann)
Now if you would level up once more and stopped having gendered pronouns.
That’s the ultimate level 😀
