Enter German and Gendering: You can not say Programmer to address all Programmers in the room. You have to call them Programmerin und Programmer or Programmer:in or Programmende. And yes, most of these words aren’t even German but if you don’t use them you are a Grammar Nazi.
English may be a hot mess but at least we don't have to worry about this nonsense
Submitted 1 year ago by robocall@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/cbcdb078-ef68-4793-b477-5df67986f83d.webp
Comments
Crass_Spektakel@lemmy.world 1 year ago
RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
It’s a little bit worse than that in fact. “Programmiererinnen und Programmierer” or “Programmierer:innen” or “Programmierende”. And if you get it wrong you are not a grammar nazi but more of a regular nazi.
/s just in case
tobbue@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Are you for real?
reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 1 year ago
intentionally misreading as wholesome - the idea is to subvert the concept of gender.
“You’ll never be a real woman!”
“Neither will the chair I’m sitting in but you keep calling it ‘her’ so maybe stfu.”
Dasus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Due to the increased acceptance of non-conforming identities, it’s become more prevalent to either ask for pronouns, tell them to a person you meet, or have them somewhere visible in things like gameshows.
That’s quite as silly to me as this whole “what gender is this washing machine” nonsense is to English-speaking people.
Here in Finland, we don’t have gendered language. Even with third person pronouns, we usually default to “it” instead of “him/her/they”. Except for pets. They always get the proper pronoun “hän”. It’s just respectful.
So yeah, just like the English wonder why they have to learn different words for something needlessly gendered in France, I too, as a Finn, wonder why I have to learn different words for something needlessly gendered in English.
groats_survivor@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Right or wrong, calling a person “it” in English is incredibly disrespectful
Dasus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Which is why I never do, obviously.
This is one of those things that, if translated directly, would be really, really bad.
Now I’ve spoken English for more than a quarter century, so my mouths used to it already, but I remember when learning the language, it was rather hard for the brain to keep switching between “he” and “she”, as it was not a distinction my brain had to make before using English.
I mean obviously I could differentiate women and men, but having to use different pronouns for both?
Quite needless.
merdaverse@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 year ago
To be fair most French words are like what you’re describing in Italian. Why does German even have gendered nouns?
ICastFist@programming.dev 1 year ago
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.
uzay@infosec.pub 1 year ago
And words that are feminine but are still used with ‘el’ and ‘un’ because they start with a stressed a
Tukma@lemmy.cafe 1 year ago
I don’t know about French, but in Spanish is feminine.
DieguiTux8623@feddit.it 1 year ago
In Italian too “la lavatrice”. And the dishwasher too, “la lavastoviglie”. btw we have gender fluid nouns like “the table” = “il tavolo” / “la tavola” with slightly different usage patterns.
Italian and Spanish are easier than French because the final -o (masculine) or -a (feminine) usually give a hint, with a few expections you have to learn by heart (“la mano” meaning “the hand” in both languages for example)…
synapse1278@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Also feminine in French: “la machine à laver”
lugal@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Die Waschmaschine die
robocall@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So it’s a girl?
Asudox@lemmy.world 1 year ago
is that like how you have to memorize every single “artikel” for every word in german?
Muzle84@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Exactly, gendered langage. But French ha only two genders, no neutral like German. And the washing machine is a Lady, any machine btw :)
geissi@feddit.de 1 year ago
But at least pronunciation is mostly consistent.
In English two words can be written almost exactly the same but sound wildly different.
Looking at you, words with “ough”
sebinspace@lemmy.world 1 year ago
die das der
Atomic@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
This shit again…
Why are you so hung up on “gender”? Just replace it with “group” and you’ll find the exact same situation in almost all languages.
In Swedish words are not gendered. But to specify the singular we use one of two groups. En or ett. It can be a word before what you want to specify. Or a suffix.
En banan, (a banana) Banan-en, (the banana)
Or perhaps.
Ett körsbär, (a cherry) Körsbär-et, (the cherry)
It’s just one if two groups. Has nothing to do with gender. But if you really want to, we can pretend it’s gendered because it doesn’t matter. It’s gonna be one or the other regardless.
Now tell me. How is this different from “gendered” languages? And as a bonus. There is NO rule regarding which to use when. You just have to know.
spirinolas@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Uh? I’m Portuguese and it works in the same in my language. I don’t know what the big deal is. You get the gender by the arti…
Oh…
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 1 year ago
“Spell ‘colonel.’ Remember to sound it out.”
Emerald@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Cologneal
Emerald@lemmy.world 1 year ago
which in turn is kalogneil
summerof69@lemm.ee 1 year ago
English is incredibly easy. My mother tongue is Russian and I’m learning German, both have genders… which are quite often different. That makes things even harder :D
ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
If it ends with an ‘e’ it’s probably feminine. Moustache is feminine. There’s a handful of exceptions that are easy to remember
robocall@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Interesting. In Spanish, I believe moustache is masculine and beards are feminine.
tino@lemmy.world 1 year ago
oh, that’s so easy! It’s both, depending how you translate it: une machine à laver or **un ** lave-linge.
Aurelius@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Say what you will, exam nightmares are real
jyte@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s a she, because that’s a woman job. Same goes for dish washer !
cafeinux@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Sorry to disappoint, a dish washer is “un lave-vaisselle”, which is masculine. A car however is “une voiture”, maybe there’s a joke in there about how manly men love their car more than their gf.
jyte@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Un lave linge, une machine à laver le linge, un lave vaisselle, une machine à laver la vaisselle. It actually all depend on they way you phrase it. Agreed though. It was mostly for the joke.
morgan_423@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Non-neutral nouns have always struck me as odd. They provide no info gain whatsoever outside of actually providing a gender if you’re referring to a person or animal (for example, in Spanish, gato -> male cat, gata -> female cat). And in those situations, a short sentence can provide instant clarification.
It’s a language feature built to be helpful in one use case, whilst simultaneously being worse in about a bazillion others. It’s a very odd choice.
Blyfh@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There’s an argument to be made that it might help clarifying when speaking to someone. Consider these two German sentences:
- “Der rote Apfel” – the red apple
- "Die rote Ampel" – the red traffic light
Imagine a noisy environment, a quiet speaker or some other problem and you only understand
- "Die rote A***el" – the red x***xx
In a language like English, you don’t have enough information to understand the meaning. The German gender system helps to direct your possible matching words (Ampel or Apfel) to the correct one, as “Die rote Apfel” is grammatically incorrect.
Another point I want to make is that it isn’t “being worse in about a bazillion other” use cases. Native speakers don’t really have an issue with noun class systems. It’s just very unintuitive and tedious for non-native language learners to memorize all the genders of nouns.
Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’d like to interject for a bit, if I may.
While german has cases, somewhat more complex verbs and gendered nouns, english also has its peculiarities that make it hard for non-natives to learn. Things like spelling and using the same word in a bazillion contests and methaphor-based idioms come to mind first. There are also simple-to-understand pecularities like its/it’s and paid/payed which not even natives get right sometimes.
The point being, for all the “hard” and “useless” parts of one language the other language (as it’s always comomparing apoles to oranges) has similarily “hard” and “useless” features itself, so in my opinion it more or less evens out.
What makes a language “easier” or “harder” to learn is how much of it you already know. In other words that’s usually how similar it is to the languages you know already.
vsis@feddit.cl 1 year ago
Spanish enters the room: words have gender, but there are special cases where the definite article switches gender.
“El hacha roja/Las hachas rojas”, “El agua fría/Las aguas frías”
Also, some words may have both genders:
“El computador/La computadora”
GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
It’s a thing in many languages. My first language has it too and it’s not hard to speak it (though I still make a lot of mistakes lol) because if you’re a native, you just remember the gender of every single word. But English is still undoubtedly much much easier to learn
uis@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Is it female?
Dyf_Tfh@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
It depend. Machine à laver (washing machine) = female Lave linge (laundry washer) = male
nyctre@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yes.
Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Most of the issues English has were inherited from French.
r00ty@kbin.life 1 year ago
I'd argue though that it's ultimately similar levels of complexity. Because sure in romance languages you need to know (and probably just "get" what gender objects are. But in English you need to remember/just "get" which words have "i before e" (because the "rule" is utter trash), and all the inconsistent pronunciation of similarly spelt words.
Most European languages with accented vowels (and some with accented other letters too) have a pretty consistent pronunciation (when the accented letters are used).
robocall@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s feminine in Spanish.
mellowheat@suppo.fi 1 year ago
“Je voudrais un baguette” I once asked in a parisian boulangerie. I don’t think anyone has looked at me with the same level of disgust before as the older lady selling the breads.
“Voilà, une baguette.”, the “une” flying through me like an icicle.
volvoxvsmarla@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I remember standing in line for crepes in Le Havre, I just had my first year of French in school and I was practicing how to order in my head, nervously repeating “un crepe avec sucre”, and killed myself over not remembering the gender of crepe. So it’s finally my turn in line and I order nervously (I am 13 years old) and they reply with “pancake with sugar, no problem” and I’m just like 😭
Somehow people not even giving you a chance to practice your language skills is awful
Deway@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Damn French, une crêpe and a pancake are not the same thing!
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“Jay parlay France-says tray bee-en! Jaytude France-says pour treys anss en laycole!”
I was in Quebec, and the locals kept trying to talk to me in French. I can technically understand French, but not at those speeds. I only had to say that phrase once to anyone, and they immediately switched to English and begged me to not speak French again. If you sound like Peggy Hill attempting to speak French, then you’ve nailed this phrase.
GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 1 year ago
My solution is replacing all les/la/l’ with a vaguely sounding “ll” sound.
I get the odd scathing look.
And occasionally someone will stop the conversation, and ask me to use the correct word, fully away of the shit I’m trying to pull.