why

Comments

• djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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.

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  • zakobjoa@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You’d love German – there is absolutely zero system or logic behind what word has which of the three genders.

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    • idunnololz@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      three?!

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    • Pilon23@feddit.dk ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      There are some general guidelines, which hold true more often than not: germanwithlaura.com/noun-gender/

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    • LegoBrickOnFire@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      There are some rules. Some of them are easy. One word ending is always feminine. I don’t remember which tho. which is a shame :/

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  • Hjalamanger@feddit.nu ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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)

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    • djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Well it works for this example, because lave-vaisselle is feminine. The root vasselle (dishes) is feminine.

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    • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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.

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  • Qwel@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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).

    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.

    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”. *

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    • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      • Dick (bite) = Feminine
      • Cunt (con) = Masculine

      My favorite example for people who think grammatical gender has more than a passing correlation to social gender.

      That being said there is actual built-in sexism to grammatical gender in some areas, e.g. job titles (un chauffeur = a driver, une chauffeuse = a prostitute).

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  • HK65@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

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  • jballs@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I also found that if you really want to be understood in French, you have to force yourself into an over the top, bordering on ridiculous French accent.

    So the key to speaking good French is to default to the most sexist position possible and intentionally speak like an asshole.

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    • Cheesus@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It sounds ridiculous to us, but that’s just how they talk. It also works in reverse for them; I sometimes have to remind my spouse when we’re among English speakers that she sounds like she doesn’t have enough mash potatoes in her mouth.

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  • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There was a whole battle about whether covid was masculine or feminine. I think feminine won, probably because it sucked.

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    • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Feminine is what the Académie settled on, months after everyone settled on Masculine.

      That institution holds some normative power with other institutions (e.g. some media outlets) but has utterly failed to impose its outdated and reactionary outlook to anyone but other reactionaries. They’re constantly coming out with revisions for words that reached common parlance years earlier.

      So common usage is Le covid. If someone used the feminine I’d have to assume they unironically use the word “Wokisme”.

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    • ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I think it was masculine, I heard a lot of people saying, “I got Covid Man.”

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    • Noodle07@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      And a lot of people still say le covid because that’s how language works

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• CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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 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.

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  • aceshigh@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Dogs are male? In Russian dogs are female. So I guess there is no standard for gendered language.

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    • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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.

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    • Obi@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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).

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    • acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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.

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• Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Lightfire228@pawb.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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

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  • Qwel@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    How does anyone manage to keep allll the words pronunciation and spelling they know is a mistery, craming pronouns on top of that isn’t that much worse

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  • Rothe@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

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    • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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.

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  • SorryQuick@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

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• FewerWheels@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I like when the gender changes what the noun is. Here are a couple Spanish examples: la cometa = the kite (feminine) or el cometa = the comet (masculine) la papa = the potato (feminine) or el papa = the Pope (masculine).

  Swahili has 18 genders, though only 16 are in active use.

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  • Battle_Masker@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Oh hey, someone that used gender in regards to Spanish correctly.

    I say that in regards to one of my Spanish teachers from high school who would always grade us wrong when we say male/female instead of masculine/feminine. One day he explained that by saying “Objects have gender! People have sex!”

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  • hOrni@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I didn’t know Swahili was that progressive.

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    • FewerWheels@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Tanzanians pride themselves on everybody getting along.

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  • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Spanish is also easier than French because you can mostly guess the gender based on the ending of the word. Most often if the word ends in “a” it’s female (la marca, la hora, la vida, la ventana). If it ends in “o” it’s mostly male (el teatro, el dormitorio, el niño…) And for the nouns that don’t end in “a” or “o” there are often patterns. When there are exceptions, it’s often because it’s a borrowed word or a shortened word. Like “la moto” for the motorcycle, but the full word for motorcycle is “la motocycleta”, same with “la foto” -> “la fotografia”.

    French also has some patterns, but not the easy a -> female, o -> male rule that Spanish has.

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• kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Image

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  • Cheesus@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

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    • deHaga@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      You’d better back down before this blows up or i break down

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    • nightlily@leminal.space ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I actually find gendered languages much more precise.

      Just never ask a group of Germans what the singular article of Nutella is.

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    • Kornblumenratte@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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?

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  • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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?

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  • rustyricotta@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I would love to see that discuss

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• ThePyroPython@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Here’s a simple trick:

  Apply misogyny and sexism /s

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  • matelt@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Buuuut cars are a men thing aren’t they? And yet it’s la voiture… Curious…

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    • BlueLineBae@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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.

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    • kronarbob@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      If you can make mysoginistic jokes about it, then it works : men get in cars just like in women. => so it’s “la”

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    • wioum@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      😏

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    • Kaput@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      on dit un char.

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  • loutr@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Doesn’t work for le lave-linge though.

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• organ@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • verdi@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yes, but what if you’re a man married to a man? Which one is the washing machine? 🤌

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    • bss03@infosec.pub ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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.)

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    • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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.

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    • FreddiesLantern@leminal.space ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The one that is sent from the future that consists of living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.

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• assembly@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Hawke@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

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    • QuestionMark@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      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)

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  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Now if you would level up once more and stopped having gendered pronouns.

    That’s the ultimate level 😀

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• yopyop@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Both! Un lave-linge. Or, une machine à laver.

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  • MeThisGuy@feddit.nl ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    ¿Por qué no los dos?

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• dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Is it possible to bash your way though this, as a foreigner, by getting the gender wrong half the time? Are mis-genedered nouns sometimes homophones for completely different things, or can you be understood with bad grammar, regardless?

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  • Qwel@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You will be understood, it will just give people a small pause.

    Sometimes it may cause confusion, like “the phone (he) went through the washing machine (she) and now <she/he> is broken” changes meaning if you get the pronoun wrong. But then if you are used to disambiguate that as you have to in english, it shouldn’t happen too often

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    • underreacting@literature.cafe ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Good to know! I’ll just not let any phones into any washing machines while traveling, to avoid grammatical confusion. I’ll wash my phone when I get home instead.

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  • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It would be like in English if someone says the “I took the fono to the storage but he didn’t have batterons for it” when you mean “I took the phone to the store but he didn’t have batteries for it” Without the correct-gendered article it sounds wrong, and sometimes it changes the meaning so it’s a different word. But, if there’s enough context often you can figure out what someone is trying to say. But, if you’re the kind of foreigner who doesn’t know the genders for common things, you also probably have a very strong accent and are making all kinds of other errors, like using the wrong articles, getting the word order wrong, etc.

    In the end, a lot of it is about context and how else you’re trying to communicate. Like, if you’re holding the phone and say “fono” it will be obvious what you mean. If someone knows you were trying to get a replacement battery, then there will be enough context to understand batterons.

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• Ceruleum@lemmy.wtf ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  How do you call a herd of washing machines?

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  • zedgeist@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    On the phone?

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  • DylanMc6@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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)

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  • embed_me@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Bonjour

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  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    you don’t. they call you.

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• underreacting@literature.cafe ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Which godforsaken language is that?

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    • cash@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Abyssal I assume.

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    • underreacting@literature.cafe ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      All good examples in comments, but in this case it’s Swedish. And if not by god then I’ll forsake it.

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  • I_am_10_squirrels@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Which language is that?

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    • underreacting@literature.cafe ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Swedish. I have family there so I visit a lot, but I’m not completely fluent.

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• Darkness343@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  English is such a poor language that they only have the article The and nouns without genders.

  Seethe and cope.

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• khannie@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Y’all would love Irish. There is no word for “yes” or “no”.

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• starman2112@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I do not respect gendered languages. I will not apologize for misgendering a pencil. The right form of “the” for an apple is “the.”

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• pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  hey, atleast you dont have 14 noun cases.

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• Kaput@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Pierre-Frédérique-Antoine and Mike having llunch after french class. Mike : Oh wregaarde un mouche! PFA : non, on dit UNE mouche. Mike: wow t’as de bons zyeux!

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• bystander@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  My two main fluent languages are not gendered. It was such a weird concept when I started to learn French.

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• Lembot_0005@lemy.lol ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  In my language we have genders for every noun. But it is trivially deducted from the spelling/pronunciation of that noun.

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• menas@lemmy.wtf ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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”

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• Noodle07@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  La machine à laver

  Le lave linge

  It’s beautiful 🙃

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• hOrni@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Try Polish. Our verbs and adjectives are also gendered.

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• MissJinx@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  female of course

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• Maultasche@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’m just happy that washing machine has the same gender in French as my language and not a different one

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• macke49@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Gender is a social construct powered by language.

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• SethTaylor@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Uh-oh. I’ve heard this one before.

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• pewpew@feddit.it ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Same as italian

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• pedz@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  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.

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• ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Check what’s between the legs of the washing machine.

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• BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Hahaha France dumb because democracy!

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