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French is wild, but it’s actually pretty easy to remember genders for appliances in particular. Generally, the more attractive the appliance, the less questionable its gender. Who could misgender a swamp cooler or a blender?
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Submitted 1 year ago by Stamets@lemmy.world to memes@sopuli.xyz
Comments
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
jballs@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Generally, the more attractive the appliance, the less questionable its gender.
Lol what
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
You trying to tell me that you don’t know your toaster’s safe word?
Valmond@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There is a say in france along the lines that the more bad something is the higher the probability it’s feminin.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just switch to German, I know it’s die Geschirrspülmaschine
fsxylo@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Germans: German is such a beautiful language!
German:
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s beautiful in its precision and how it constantly clears your throat
porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
That’s a dishwasher, a “washing machine” is for clothes
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s a machine that washes, close enough
tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
That’s right it’s das Kleidungumnassengerät
pedz@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Ok then. What’s the gender of Nutella?
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That wasn’t covered in German class
KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Clearly it’s dieras Nutella
pumpkinseedoil@mander.xyz 1 year ago
At least in my part of Austria it’s usually „der Geschirrspüler“
Flaqueman@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
What do you thin? It’s conceptually a hole that gets wet!
earphone843@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
What about a dryer?
zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 1 year ago
It’s conceptually Ben Shapiro’s wife.
Valmond@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ur mom!
fargeol@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ethalis@jlai.lu 1 year ago
C’mon, une machine a laver is obviously a girl! Unless you call it a lave-linge instead, in which case it’s a boy.
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
La laveuse
YoiksAndAway@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
Teacher: Time for the French, get your berets on!
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“Mark, please pass out the baguettes to the class. Only take one!”
samus12345@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Valmond@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Achctually in french they write ah ah ah.
Very disturbing.
yopyop@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
It can be both ! You can either call it “un lave-linge” or “une machine à laver”.
Sirius006@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Yeah, it would be nice if people stopped assuming it gender.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Un baguette, une baguette, le la.
Il y a un truc qui peut vous servir dans cette situation là.
Dites juste deux baguettes.
C’est un peu plus cher mais en tout cas, il vaut la peine et vous aurez deux baguettes à la fin.
TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
A baguette, a baguette, the a.
There is a trick that can help you in this situation.
Just say two baguettes.
It is a little more expensive but in any case, it is worth it and you will have two baguettes at the end.
I don’t think the translator worked that well here, but I think it makes it funner lmao
logi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And if yo get it wrong you’ll be forever banned from blahaj.
hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Can we not bring these stupid, lazy jokes into Lemmy please?
TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
mistakes = ok
purposefully using the wrong pronoun = not okis it that difficult? I don’t understand why you’re so upset about a gender diverse instance enforcing their rules 🤷♀️
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
My native language is gendered but I still don’t always know how I’m supposed to talk about male members of a species with a feminine name or vice versa.
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 1 year ago
i thought gendered languages had two genders for words like “person” so you could make the swap when the gender is known
troglodyte_mignon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not always, no. In French, “a person” is “une personne”. It’s a feminine noun — always feminine — and it’s perfectly fine to use it for a man, because what matters here is the gender of the word itself. “An individual” is “un individu” — always masculine, even of the individual in question could be a man. A sentry is “une sentinelle”; it’s a feminine word, even though most sentinels are probably men, considering the gender ratio in the army. This dude is une sentinelle. If you add adjectives, you would use the feminine form so that it matches the word sentinelle: “a sleepy sentry” is “une sentinelle somnolente”.
That said, many (most?) words refering to human beings have feminine and masculine versions. That’s the case for most job names. The baker = le boulanger / la boulangère. The mailman = le facteur, the mailwoman = la factrice. Those words often have an ending that signals the gender (-teur is obviously masculine, -trice the feminine equivalent). Some job names are identical for both genders, but with different articles depending on the gender of the worker you’re talking about: for example the despicable Élisabeth Borne is une ministre, and the spawn-of-hell Bruno Retailleau is un ministre. Words that describe family relationships are mostly gendered too (le cousin / la cousine).
“A wasp” is “une guêpe”. It’s feminine for male as well as for female wasps, although you can add “mâle” or “femelle” if you need to be more specific. “How to recognise a male wasp?” translates as “Comment reconnaître une guêpe mâle ?”, whereas the sentence “Comment reconnaître un guêpe mâle ?” is a blatant grammatical error that no native speaker would make, because the word “guêpe” is of feminine gender, even if the specific wasp you’re talking about happens to be a male.
Some species have different words for male and female specimens. “A sheep” is “un mouton” (masculine). A male sheep would be called “un bélier” (masculine), a female sheep “une brebis” (feminine). If I say “un bélier”, you know that I’m talking about a male sheep, but if I say “un mouton”, you can’t know whether it’s male or female, despite the fact that the word is grammatically masculine. “A cat” is “un chat” (masculine). A female cat is “une chatte” (feminine), but it would be fine to call a female cat “un chat” (masculine) too, because it’s the generic name for the species. In fact, some people make a point of always calling female cats “un chat” because une chatte is also slang for female genitalia.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Most words that I can think of for various categories of people do have two genders, although in many cases the feminine version sounds very awkward to me, almost like the “trix” suffix in English.
HowAbt2morrow@futurology.today 1 year ago
Doesn’t it depend on if it’s a top load or bottom load model?
letsgo@lemm.ee 1 year ago
These days with everything being LGBTQIAOMGWTFBBQ++++++++, no, not even remotely.
tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
I think power bottom loaders are a thing now
supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s common in most Latin derived languages
Llufollis@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
A machine in french is feminine. It come from latin machina (μαχανά in Greek) which is feminine (-ina suffix is feminine). Washing is just a verb so it have no influence on the “gender”.
A washing machine -> Une machine à laver
iegod@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Close but wrong. It’s because washing is feminine.
Llufollis@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
All those years of school and lecturing from my teachers only to discover it was all lies… thank anyway I guess.
NahMarcas@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Sadly true, Its like an on pourpouse languaje setting
beejboytyson@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That nice dirty ass
TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
in my Spanish (HS) class if I don’t know I just guess based off of the vibes
I’ve guessed correctly more often than not
JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
I don’t know how German compares to French or Spanish, but in German things can be masculine, feminine, or neutral. What I do—which is partially as a protest, and partially out of laziness—is to assume every non-person noun is neutral.
It works surprisingly well in IT where basically all nouns are neutral, but I probably sound like Kevin from The Office in every other context.
AfricanGrey@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
ITT: Canadians butchering the French language.
w3dd1e@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The word for potato is my favorite. It’s so fancy and English just calls it a potato.
AtariDump@lemmy.world 1 year ago
SleepyBear@lemmy.world 1 year ago
My highschool french class always loved the word for “squirrel”, “pomegranate”, and of course the ever popular “seal in the shower” combo for extra fun.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
to be fair, that’s a modern take. in antiquity it was so ignoble it was given the generic name for a fruit/vegetable.
a modern version might be more akin to “dirt thing”
Ashiette@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Potatoes weren’t introduced to europeans in the antiquity
wisely@feddit.org 1 year ago
This is my biggest struggle with German. 3 genders and then plurals, cases etc that can change it again.
Jhex@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Washing Machines are girls for some reason… sme as dryers
GrosPapatouf@lemmy.world 1 year ago
In France, “lave-linge” and “machine à laver” are equally common. The first is masculine and the second feminine. For dryers, “sèche-linge” is definitely most common, and is masculine. Of course this might be very different in Quebec or other french-speaking regions.
Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 1 year ago
Just to confirm for people who don’t know it’s not the actual physical object that has a gender but the word
madcaesar@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Isn’t machine female? La machine
scutiger@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“La machine à laver,” or “la laveuse”
But not all machines are X machine, some have specific names that could be either gender.
finickydesert@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
I think it’s because of gender roles back in the day
Spoilt@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Protip : french is misogynist
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 year ago
Je suis enchanté
Où est le bibliothèque?
Voilà mon passport
Ah, Gérard Depardieu
Baguette, hon hon hon
Baguette, hon hon hon (hon hon) hon hon hon!
zephorah@lemm.ee 1 year ago
La Casa vs El hospital. What determines the gender of each? Spelling is great, but this piece boggles the mind.
RVGamer06@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Girl, easy.
IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Me who don’t want to assume someone’s gender: starts speaking Chinese (because “他” is a gender neutral pronoun)
More reasons why Latin based language sucks. We should make Chinese the lingua franca of the world… 😉
PunnyName@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Je ne suis pas Francais
wetsoggybread@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If you’re not sure just guess femminine, that seema to be the case more often than not
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
In Hebrew, the word for “stone” is male-sounding while grammatically female, and the word for “rock” is female-sounding while grammatically male, you know, for simplicity.
Corno@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Fake. If that was me, those baguettes would be gone within 0.3 nanoseconds.
hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Reminds me of the time when I forgot if the Latin word for bedroom is -a or -um… (it was cubiculum btw, apparently all rooms are gender neutral)
WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com 1 year ago
Foreign language classes in high school creates gender abolitionists
can@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
It’s all a construct!