• @TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Just wait until you look into French numbers.

    How different languages say 97:

    🇬🇧: 90+7 (ok, there is some jank in English numbers - 13-19 are in line with the Germanic pronunciation, i.e. pronounced “right to left”, as a weird hold-over from the more Germanic Old English)

    🇪🇸: 90+7

    🇩🇪: 7+90

    🇫🇷: 4x20+10+7

    And if you think that’s bad, the Danes actually make the French look sane…

    🇩🇰: 7+(-½+5)x20

    Even Danes generally don’t really know why their numbers are like that, they just remember and go along with it.

  • @mellowheat@suppo.fi
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    834 months 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.

    • Stamets
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      744 months ago

      “Stupid fucking foreigner thinking my bread has a dick…”

    • volvoxvsmarla
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      394 months 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

      • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        “Jay parlay France-says tray bee-en! Jaytude France-says pour treys anss in 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.

      • @Taniwha420@lemmy.world
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        44 months ago

        Seriously. It’s pretty discouraging and off-putting. Although, when I was in the Aquitaine I don’t think I got any of that.

        … Maybe it’s because they remember being under English management and don’t want to give anyone an excuse?

        I do find the French have very little ability to understand their language if it’s getting mangled.

        • volvoxvsmarla
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          24 months ago

          I think it’s just taking the easy, accommodating and safe route mostly.

          A friend of mine taught himself German for years (he lives in Canada) and then, eager to put his knowledge into practice, went to Germany for three weeks. Whenever he attempted to speak German, people would reply in English - out of niceness.

          He was so depressed and discouraged, he went home, vowed to never speak German again, taught himself Russian, went to Russia for a semester, people there were happy to speak Russian with him. He even met his future wife there, so it’s a happy end I guess.

          I don’t remember if I ever heard him speak German (after all, he vowed and was still very hurt), but if his German was just half as good as his Russian, he should have had no problem with being understood.

          James, in case you read this, St. Petersburg was freaking awesome and you freaking rock.

    • @Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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      134 months ago

      Baguettes are distinctly penis shaped, so the French are just wrong about that.

    • @casmael@lemm.ee
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      104 months ago

      Assigning gender to words is fucking stupid and adds unnecessary extra complexity to the language without any gaining any additional meaning. Personally I have no time for it.

    • GreatAlbatross
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      44 months 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.

  • @Mr_Blott@lemmy.world
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    524 months ago

    Me speaking to a French guy last week -

    “We’ve just been the the musée de l’automobile in Mulhouse”

    “Sorry, where?”

    “Mulhouse”

    “Where?”

    “Mulhouse”

    "Aaaaaah I see! It’s pronounced [pronounces Mulhouse *exactly the same FUCKING way I just pronounced it]

    😂 Happens very regularly

    • tiredofsametab
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      364 months ago

      Just because your ears can’t hear a difference doesn’t mean that there is none. I deal with this a lot when Japanese ask me for help and can’t differentiate between certain sounds

      • @force@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Yeah in Japanese a few consonant sounds like ‘r’ and ‘l’ sounds or ‘h’/‘f’ or ‘s’/‘th’ or ‘z’/‘ð’ are basically heard as the same (an American ‘r’ might even sound like a weird ‘w’ to Japanese), and English has around 17 to 24 distinctive vowel sounds generally (based on quality) while Japanese has 5 plus vowel length and tones (pitch accent). As a result of the phonetic differences between the languages, it can be hard to hear or recreate the differences in sound quality (especially when it’s Japanese on the speaking/listening end, but Americans also sure have a terrible time trying to make Japanese sounds like the “n” or “r” or “ch”/“j” or “sh”/“zh” or “f” or “u”. they just perceive it as the same as the closest sounds in English)

        In my experience, only God can hear the difference between Polish “dż” and “dź” / “cz” and “ć” (and the others)…

        • @orl0pl@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I’m speak some Polish and dż is like job, cz is like check, sz is like shop, idk how rest is pronounced in other words

        • @tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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          14 months ago

          Wait, how does ch/j or sh differ from the English sounds? And what words use zh? I don’t think I’ve seen that romaji

          • @force@lemmy.world
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            They are all palatal sibilants in Japanese, while in English they’re palato-alveolar sibilants. Very hard difference for English speakers to hear, but the distinction is common enough to exist in many languages. And the “ch”/“j”/“sh”/“zh” sounds I speak of are just common variations of “t”/“d”/“s”/“z” that occur before “i” (they are spelled si -> shi, zi -> zhi/ji, ti -> chi, di -> ji).

            Usually “zhi” isn’t spelled out in Rōmaji though, actually it’s often spelled “ji” even when they’re sometimes pronounced differently (so “zi” and “di” end up being spelled the same, perhaps confusingly, but most people pronounce them the same so it doesn’t really matter). But I think pronouncing them differently is more of an archaic, obsolete, ot dialectal thing anyways.

            The “h” in “hi” also sounds different.

            The spelling also changes in the same way before a syllable that starts with a “y” sound, e.g. syu -> shu or dyo -> jo.

            Before “u” some consonants also change (hu -> fu, tu -> tsu, du -> dzu).

            These sound changes don’t occur for all speakers/dialects, some don’t have a “shi” and just say “si” for example, but they are the most common and standard I believe.

        • tiredofsametab
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          14 months ago

          English also doesn’t have gemination (small tsu) which does make a difference in Japanese as well. Hearing that in very quick Japanese for words I don’t know can still be different. Same with vowel length. Once you know the word, it doesn’t matter as much how someone says it, but when it’s new vocab and the speaker is very quick, it can be tough.

          • @tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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            24 months ago

            I didn’t know the technical term gemination for っ, appreciate it. Can’t it manifest somewhat similarly to stops/plosives though? English doesn’t generally use those followed by the same consonant within the same word, but the phrase “port ten” is almost like the t consonant in itte, but with less of a pause in the middle. Contrast it with the word “portend” and you can see that we have a little bit more of a pause in “port ten”.

            • tiredofsametab
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              24 months ago

              When I say “port ten” and ポッテン (with or without the long ‘o’) it seems I’m doing something different. Maybe a glottal stop and hard attack? I’m not actually a linguist though, so I could be very wrong.

    • @Ethalis@jlai.lu
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      214 months ago

      No offense intended since I’m fully incapable of pronouncing tons of English words properly (fuck “squirrel” specifically), but as a Frenchman who has lived near Mulhouse for a few years and interacted with a lot of foreign students, what you said probably wasn’t close to being the exact same as that guy

    • @Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      04 months ago

      To add to what that other person said, when you grow up your brain gets used to hearing the sounds common to your accent and you can even stop hearing the difference between certain sounds when someone speaks your language with a different accent!

      In Quebec french there’s a big difference between the sound of “pré” and “prè” that doesn’t exist with some of the french accents in France and they’re unable to recreate that difference and might even be unable to hear it!

      • @force@lemmy.world
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        “Pré” and “prè” consistently sound distinctly different in most, dare I say almost all, accents in mainland France. The difference is the same with basically all words spelled with those vowels. “Ê” also sounds like a long “è” in most words for most people. “e” also sounds like “é” when before silent letters except for “t”, and sounds like “è” when before multiple letters or before “x” or before silent “t” or if it’s the last sound except for open monosyllabic words, and it sounds special or is silent elsewhere. “-ent” is always silent too. Obviously doesn’t apply to “en/em”, also special exception for “-er/-es”.

          • @force@lemmy.world
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            The vowel sounds in “près” and “pré” are very clearly different, and the sound in “prêt” changes from “è” to “é” when in liaison because it always sounds like “è” at the end of words (and separately, in closed syllables) and always sounds like “é” in open syllables otherwise (liaison triggers a change in the syllable structure which changes the vowel here). This does not contradict what I said. You said “(pr)é” and “(pr)è” sound the same, nothing about “(pr)ê”.

  • @Dasus@lemmy.world
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    394 months 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.

      • @jabjoe@feddit.uk
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        64 months ago

        We could do with something though. ‘Them’ doesn’t really cut it as it’s not clear if it’s plural or singular. ‘It’ is insulting.

        If there was a good one, I’d just use it all the time for everyone. Why should gender be so important to identity? Isn’t it a regression to be so hungup on gender?

          • @jabjoe@feddit.uk
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            04 months ago

            It’s not clear when you say they if you mean a person or a group. The term is for both. It’s ambiguous.

            • @KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              It’s not. Context provides you all the needed info in 99.9% of cases.

              • “Alex is coming over after school, I haven’t seen them in forever.” Obviously means a single person.
              • “There’s construction going on? When will they be done?” Honestly doesn’t matter but obviously means a group of people.

              Sure, you need to provide context, but you’d need to with a pronoun anyway.

              • “Where is she?” Who the heck is “she”?
              • “What time is he finished with work?” Who are we talking about?…

              You’re essentially looking at the words singular and plural definitions and coming up with a reason they don’t work. (Hey, another “they” and I’m sure you picked up on the fact that I’m not talking about a singular human.)

              Can you even think of a situation that has ambiguity, which would actually come up in natural language?

              • @jabjoe@feddit.uk
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                04 months ago

                Really easy and you know it. Of top of my head:

                “Get who wrote this rubbish in here.” “I’ve message them. They are coming to the meeting now.” “You mean a team or an individual did this?”

                It does depend how pedantic you want to be. I’ll dyslexic and I don’t process language like others and so I don’t like ambiguous. My default interpretation is frequently different. Human language has enough ambiguousness as it is. I’d like it reduced ideally.

                • @KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  34 months ago

                  “Who wrote this rubbish” is already ambiguous from the start, since it can be a singular author, or multiple. I admit they/them didn’t help resolve that ambiguity, but it isn’t the cause.

        • TheRealKuni
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          54 months ago

          ’Them’ doesn’t really cut it as it’s not clear if it’s plural or singular.

          Beyond the other reply about the history of the singular “they,” we also have another prominent plural pronoun we use in the singular all the time. So often we don’t even think about it as being plural anymore. So much so that we’ve created new plural versions of this already plural pronoun.

          “You.”

          “You” was originally the objective case plural 2nd person pronoun in English, with “ye” being the nominative.

          But “thou” was considered informal, like the German “du” or the Spanish “tú,” and the plural 2nd person was used as the formal. And this eventually supplanted “thou” completely.

          And now we think of “you” as singular to the point where we make slang words like “y’all” and “yous” to have a plural.

        • @dingus@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I’m a native English speaker and I’ve used “they” as a singular third person neutral pronoun since before I even knew anything about trans or nonbinary people. It’s commonly accepted and not at all unusual usage, at least in American English where I grew up.

          • @jabjoe@feddit.uk
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            14 months ago

            It’s fine to use it singular, but it’s also fine to use it as plural. All you know is it’s not zero persons.

        • @blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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          -34 months ago

          I’d be happy with ‘xe’ for gender neutral single-person pronoun. And for awhile I was using that from time to time - but because its rare and people aren’t use to it, using it is a distraction from what you actually are trying to talk about. I’ve stopped using it because I don’t really want to talk about it over and over. Sometimes people find it confusing. Sometime people are just curious. And some people find aggravating (because they don’t like the idea of degendering or changing genders).

          • @jj4211@lemmy.world
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            34 months ago

            I don’t mind the concept of a degendeted pronoun, but I would vote against “xe”. Just find it unpleasant to use the “x” sound so much. Don’t know what I would like, just x makes it extra weird on top of the “weirdness” of trying to explicitly evolve language.

            • @blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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              14 months ago

              Sure. And as with a lot of English, it isn’t totally clear has ‘xe’ is even meant to be pronounced. (I assume like ‘ze’).

              Perhaps a nicer sounding version would be ‘ce’. Or whatever. To be honest, it really doesn’t matter to me. I’d be happy to just call literally everyone “she” or “he” or whatever. I’d suggest that we just use “he” for all genders, because many people on the internet seem to be doing that anyway; but obviously that would be upsetting to people who have been fighting for gender recognition. Pushing for “she” might be a bit better, but not by a lot. … So we’re probably in this mess for a long time. But I reckon if we just shake it up just a little bit as individuals, using different words and such, we’ll eventually start to see something change more widely.

              • @KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                24 months ago

                In my mind I’ve always pronounced “xe” with the X sounding like the latter half of the letter said aloud, followed by the letter E.

                Though I just looked it up and “zee” is the correct pronunciation.

          • @jabjoe@feddit.uk
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            -14 months ago

            If you get aggravated being degendering, or of others changing gender, it makes me think you are insecure about your gender. They should get over it. ‘xe’ would be good, but I don’t see it taking off with being popularizied some how. Some popular TV show or something.

      • @Dasus@lemmy.world
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        24 months 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.

      • @Dasus@lemmy.world
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        24 months ago

        First, I’d like to identify Finnish as a Finno-Ugric language, more than a uralic one, because “uralic” is very broad, just like, say, “Indo-European languages”. There’s several distinction within both groups.

        But yeah, there are quite a lot of grammatical cases, I can see that yeah. I wouldn’t bother learning Finnish if I wasn’t born with it, lol.

        My point is rather that English calling French out on something linguistic. English is three languages in a trenchcoat masquerading as one.

        But also, getting the conjugation wrong won’t really be offensive to anyone, whereas confusing he/she just because your brain is unused to having to specify such things and your mouth is unused to the “sh” sound in she, and ending up misgendering someone, could be. Even accidentally.

        “She sells seashells on the seashore” is a very challenging tongue twister for Finns.

        Also, note how I can write a sentence like “hän menee kirjastoon”, meaning “[3rd person nongendered singular] goes to the library”, but if you run that through a translator to English, the translator will have to make up a gender. And not surprisingly, the default is the masculine one. (Down with the patriarchy and all that.)

        Although this also means you’ll lose information when translating to Finnish. Ups and downs.

  • Crass Spektakel
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    4 months ago

    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.

    And btw, the fact that we address females with “die” does not mean we want them dead, thank you and have a good day.

      • @freebee@sh.itjust.works
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        It is real. People have gotten mad at me for saying the 1 general (in my opinion in that case not-gendered) word instead of the slight pause and adding *innen. It’s quite difficult for non-native speakers to get used to it.

        Meanwhile, in Dutch language, many female doctors, bosses, directors etc all prefer to be spoken to with the general “male” word, because they prefer to be spoken to on an equal term as their male colleagues and for the difference not to be made. Witnessing Germanic languages growing apart a tad further I guess.

        • @neutron@thelemmy.club
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          14 months ago

          Same in Spanish. We can say programadores (male gender plural form) to refer to a group of programmers, regardless of gender, as the standard says. However, in recent years it’s become common to say programadores y programadoras (male plural and female plural) or programadoras y programadores (female plural and male plural). Using only the male gender causes many people to complain, or so I’ve heard.

        • @bier@feddit.nl
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          04 months ago

          Is “dokter” even a male word? What’s the female version “dokterin”,“dokteres”?

    • @BambiDiego@lemmy.world
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      244 months ago

      Spanish speaker here. For as chaotic and wild as English is, I’ve always appreciated that it has no gendered nouns. Why are chairs female? Makes no sense

      • danielbln
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        84 months ago

        Clearly, because chairs are obviously male (German). Anything else is just silly.

        • @pseudo@jlai.lu
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          4 months ago

          I’m sorry, French here, but a chair can be both. It depends of the type : Une chaise is obviously feminine while un siège or un fauteuil are definitely masculin. Also Germanic language like English and German mixing these two meaning are silly languages.

            • @pseudo@jlai.lu
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              24 months ago

              I think we just spotted a cultural fracture btw people of Romance language and the one of Germanic language.

        • @neutron@thelemmy.club
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          Somone has to come up with the word chairdude. And some corporate bean counter will invent the word chairhuman to show how diverse they are.

      • @neutron@thelemmy.club
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        24 months ago

        Grammatical genders are just that. Grammatical. It’s a classification scheme. Latin had neutral nouns and plenty of languages make grammatical differences between animate and inanimate nouns. That current romance languages make a deliberate division between “male” and “female” nouns does not mean they have to correspond to actual features of human beings.

        That being said. It’s ridiculous that agua is femenine but with the definite article it has to be el agua in singular but las aguas in plural. All the explanations by RAE simply amounts to “we like it this way, lolol”.

    • @Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com
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      14 months ago

      How does that work out? I mean in french you’d gender it by what it is defining. A yellow car, the “A” is gendered the same as the cars gender.

      Oh.

      I think I get it. That must be confusing for foreigners!

      Cheers Polish brothers and sisters!

      • @hOrni@lemmy.world
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        94 months ago

        Nah. Having pronouns would be too easy. We are changing the end of the word. Yellow would be “żółty” if male, “żółta” if female and “żółte” if genderless or plural. Unless male plural, then it would be “żółci”.

  • @merdaverse@lemmy.world
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    294 months 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.

    • @GargleBlaster@lemmy.world
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      264 months ago

      I don’t know what you’re on about. It’s “die Waschmaschine” (washing machine, female), “das Waschmittel” (laundry detergent, neutral) and “der Trockner” (dryer, male).

      Pretty self explanatory /s

      • @cygon@lemmy.world
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        54 months ago

        And after going on Die Toilette (female toilet), you use Das Spulbecken (neutral washbasin) and stand in front of Der Spiegel (male mirror).

        Despite accepting this all as perfectly normal, conservatives still manage to make a stink when someone writes or speaks in a way that addresses two different genders :-S

        • Kühe sind toll
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          14 months ago

          And then there’s also the fabolous gender swap in the kitchen:

          You walk into Die Küche(female kitchen) and after that you come out of Der Küche(male kitchen).

          • @pseudo@jlai.lu
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            24 months ago

            TIL In french, we have un amour, single form masculin that turn feminin in the plural form.

        • Kühe sind toll
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          54 months ago

          That’s because of the so called “Dimitutiv”. What it does is basically, it say that the object in queue is smaller version of it. Some examples:

          Der Baum - Das Bäumchen

          Der Junge - Das Jüngchen

          It’s always neutral. The original word is “Die Magd” and the Dimitutiv is Mädchen.

      • @Obi@sopuli.xyz
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        24 months ago

        It’s exactly the same in french, I wonder how closely the genders of random things align between the two languages.

    • I Cast Fist
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      44 months 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
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        34 months ago

        And words that are feminine but are still used with ‘el’ and ‘un’ because they start with a stressed a

    • @GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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      204 months ago

      Disclaimer: this is terrible advice if you are trying to actually learn the proper grammar, don’t follow it.

      That being said, you can get by in everyday situations perfectly fine using “De” for anything, especially if you have a foreign accent people will forgive you.

      De junge, de Mädchen, de Baby, de Tisch, de Stuhl, de Feuerzeuggas-Nachfüllkartusche. People will understand.

      • volvoxvsmarla
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        114 months ago

        That’s so true. Or just guess. Like, for real, no one cares. Besides your Goethe Institute examiner. Das Tisch, die Mädchen, der Banane. Doesn’t matter. My father has awful, awful German, despite living here for 35ish years, and his whole job is communicating with people and he made a huge career despite having no clue of grammar and buying sweet red Erdbeben in the supermarket.

        I also adore foreigners from different countries speaking in completely broken German to one another and somehow being able to figure out what the other one was saying and having a blast. Admittedly, with the rise of English, this has become much rarer. But it just shows you that language is so much more than just grammar and vocabulary.

  • Alien Nathan Edward
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    264 months 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.”

  • @EunieIsTheBus@feddit.de
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    264 months ago

    A washing machine is obviously female because doing laundry is a thing for women.

    And now I will sit back and watch how many people get mad at me because they don’t understand sarcasm.

    • @Goblin_Mode@ttrpg.network
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      204 months ago

      And now I will sit back and watch how many people get mad at me because they don’t understand sarcasm.

      Really getting worked up over that imaginary person you created huh? Lol

    • @Taniwha420@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      No. It’s feminine because you put dirty things in it.

      EDIT: I’m going to get lynched by the hyper vigilant with you. We’re in this together now.

    • @tjsauce@lemmy.world
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      24 months ago

      You already stated sarcasm and this is Lemmy, so whatever popcorn you expect must come from the floor

    • @Obi@sopuli.xyz
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      4 months ago

      I mean I’m pretty sure a lot of it comes from things like that, I also notice quite often the positive things are male while the negative opposite is female: le beau temps/le soleil, la pluie ; le plaisir, la douleur ; le jour, la nuit; etc etc.

      Edit: not sure why this comment is getting downvoted, do you think I’m saying it’s a good thing the language was built on sexist principles? Here’s an article that talks about how it wasn’t always like that and there was a campaign in the 17th century to masculinize the language, making the masculine the “noble” gender in grammatical rules. It’s not far fetched to think similar principles applied to gendering random things.

    • @jeremyparker@programming.dev
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      04 months ago

      It’s not a coincidence, it’s systemic sexism. If you use sexism as your guiding principle when if comes to generated nouns, in almost every language that has them, you’ll be right most of the time.

    • @Meron35@lemmy.world
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      84 months ago

      Not the worst example for Japanese. The verb kakeru 掛ける is very common and has ~25 different meanings. This is before you count the other verbs also pronounced as kakeru such as 翔ける、賭ける etc

      • @neutron@thelemmy.club
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        24 months ago

        It can be argued that most of the different meanings arise from different contexts and how the speakers associate that particular word to different uses. When an English speaker uses the word save, it can mean either “save a person from danger”, “save a computer file”, and many others, which can have different meaning-translations to other languages.

      • @Sept@lemmy.ml
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        24 months ago

        Yeah but we win, we Can Say “putain” in any situation. It will Always work.