wisely

@wisely@feddit.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  36 is almost 40? Don’t take almost half our 30’s away!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WHY⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes they do match up where if you are talking about a female animal or person it’s a feminine word etc. For inanimate objects I’ve been told they aren’t necessarily giving or thinking of them as having a gender though, not like it would be in English.

  There seems to be no standard way to address someone nonbinary, it’s even worse than in English. Best I know is to ask. Until then most simply skip the pronoun and use their name instead, or Sie. Since Sie is respectful and is already used for people of any gender when used formally.

  The nonbinary category itself is often called “divers”. Nouns that reference gender can be combined by adding an asterisk in the middle. “Lehrer*innen”. As a warning though some conservative and older people can get upset about the asterisk.

  Do you know what level German you are at? My older relatives spoke German but passed away when I was young. I always regretted not learning it and being monolingual. So in my 30’s I decided I was just going to learn it even if it took years or I never fully got genders right. Now it’s been 15 months learning daily and am at the B1 level. So not an expert just intermediate with more to learn.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WHY⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My understanding was that it’s not seen as a male or female like it would be in English. Like der Tisch, they aren’t thinking of the table being manly, it’s just the way it’s said. Also neuter is seen more like a child gender than nonbinary. I have heard nonbinary people find neuter as being offensive because it’s infantilizing them. At least that’s how it was explained to me.

  Would love to know more if anyone has any experience with that. I could be wrong as I am still learning and don’t know about gender theory in German. Are there gender politics for objects in German?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WHY⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah as an English speaker using neuter seems very natural. Modern loan words such as from IT are often neuter for that reason.

  However in general, words are statistically most likely to be masculine and least likely to be neuter. So if the word ending isn’t obviously feminine and it’s not a category such as IT that has a common gender you may be better off guessing masculine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you feel like you've reached the end of what the world has to offer?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes I do feel like this. Sure there are things that I haven’t done, many involving money or skills that I don’t have.

  But life feels like playing a video game that is procedurally generated. It’s minor variations of the same component things and sensations that I have felt before.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WHY⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is my biggest struggle with German. 3 genders and then plurals, cases etc that can change it again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If scientists could make you immortal but could only do it by transferring your consciousness into a single video game for ever, which game would you choose?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure but everything would be blocky and you would be stuck with villagers saying hmm all the time. Unless you decide to live alone with the lights always on so a creeper, enderman or zombie doesn’t get you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I got the money saved in my mansions safe.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It gets worse than that. Many of us have expenses that are higher than our income.