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?
I say this since sometimes “bad/wrong” is less about understanding and more about “that sounds funny” or “nobody talks like that.”
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.
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
La machine à laver
Le lave linge
It’s beautiful 🙃
Common nonbinary French W
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.
You’d love German – there is absolutely zero system or logic behind what word has which of the three genders.
There are some general guidelines, which hold true more often than not: https://germanwithlaura.com/noun-gender/
For example, planets that don’t end with an e and which aren’t Venus tend to be male
three?!
German is woke
Polish also has three. She, he, it/this.
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)
Well it works for this example, because lave-vaisselle is feminine. The root vasselle (dishes) is feminine.
vaiselle is actually inhereting its gender in an unrelated manner.
It comes from Latin vāscellum which is a Neuter noun.
But the specific form that gave rise to vaiselle was the collective plural of that noun vāscella. source
And it’s a common pattern that in vulgar latin, (what gave rise to french), collective plural nouns were interpreted as feminine. I think this is a general tendency and unrelated to the noun’s meaning. The reason often given is that neuter plural endings and feminine singular endings were the same in Latin.
BTW; this is also the latin root of the english word vessel.
(PS: I agree with you that gender in language is problematic and I prefer non gendered as well).
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.
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.
I’m just happy that washing machine has the same gender in French as my language and not a different one
Y’all would love Irish. There is no word for “yes” or “no”.
How do you say “no means no”
I’m a bit rusty but I think it’s “Feck’off ya’cunt”.
Only parents, priests, those in front of children or those in pleasant company say feck. We’re more or less married to the Aussies with our love of the vulgar words. 🇮🇪 ❤️ 🇦🇺
“Feck aff ye daft coont.”
Eh, that’s a great question. My Irish used to be good enough that I’d be able to answer that but I’m not sure what the direct translation would be. There is a word that’s very close to “no” which is “níl” (neel) but in general it’s short for “níl mé” (neel may - I am not).
In the present tense there is “tá” (taw) which is essentially short for “tá mé” (taw may - I am) but for example the answer to the question “Were you?” is “Ní raimh mé” (nee r-ow may) which is “I was not” but it is contextual. The pronunciation of “raimh” also varies by each of the 4 provinces along with every other word which is confusing as fuck. Some would say “rev” for “raimh”.
In general it’s the positive or negative of the verb though - were you? I was. Did you? I did. Will you? I will. Did she? She did etc.
Someone with better Irish may be along to hopefully make a show of me.
edit: Google translate says “ciallaíonn ní nach bhfuil” is “no means no” but there is no way in hell any actual Irish speaker would say those words when the context is so simple.
“ní nach bhfuil” (nee noch will) is “no is not”, kinda. ciallaíonn is “means” straight up though.
In general it’s the positive or negative of the verb though - were you? I was. Did you? I did. Will you? I will. Did she? She did etc.
So the verb has a negative declension, or is it just some kind of conjunction that negates the verb?
Either way, that’s kind of beautiful. English has a problem where one can ask a compound question, and replying “no” doesn’t clarify a damn thing. This would be impossible in Irish, since you’d have to pick one or some combination of questions to reply to, as the verb-form is required.
So the verb has a negative declension, or is it just some kind of conjunction that negates the verb?
It’s so long since I used declension that I honestly can’t remember it’s use but you repeat the verb but in the positive or negative form and there are differences if that makes sense?
Like “Do you understand?” is “I understand” and “I do not understand” is a little different.
I’m teaching my youngest lad Irish and I’ll regularly ask him “An dtuigeann tú” (on diggin too) and he’ll respond with “tuigim” (“tig-im” - “I understand” (which is strictly a contraction)).
edit: The negative would be “Ní thuigim” which we would pronounce as “nee higim” (I do not understand) so there’s a definite change in the word for the negative.
edit 2: The answers to “were you?” would be bhí mé “vee may” (I was) and Ní raimh mé “nee r-ow may” (I was not) so it is quite different to answer in the positive or negative.
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 wear 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.
Dogs are male? In my language dogs are female. So I guess there is no standard for gendered language.
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.
Basically the last good decision in the creation of English
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).
In German, dogs are male by default (der Hund can be used as a generic term for both male and female dogs), but bitches are female (die Hündin). Cats are female by default (die Katze), but tomcats are male (der Kater).
We do not use Hündin as a slur for women, but Hund can be used as a slur for men.
German has both genders for dogs, but since the variants look (and sound) slightly different, it’s not instantly obvious:
Der Hund - a male dog
Die Hündin - a female dog
My two main fluent languages are not gendered. It was such a weird concept when I started to learn French.
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.
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!”
I didn’t know Swahili was that progressive.
Here’s a simple trick:
Apply misogyny and sexism /s
Buuuut cars are a men thing aren’t they? And yet it’s la voiture… Curious…
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.
And yet ‘ship’ is masculine in French, despite even in genderless English being referred to by sailors throughout history as a ‘she’
It is masculine because a ship is full of seamen.
🥁🐍
But they still name ships with women’s names, I stopped thinking too hard about this…
So are washing machines, apparently.
Don’t put your dick in that
Help me, stepsister…
La règle trente-trois, I see. Consider me enlightened!
Edit: merde non c’est la règle trente-quatre bordel de chiottes
If you can make mysoginistic jokes about it, then it works : men get in cars just like in women. => so it’s “la”
😏
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.
Now if you would level up once more and stopped having gendered pronouns.
That’s the ultimate level 😀
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.
Try Polish. Our verbs and adjectives are also gendered.
A washing machine is feminine, how is it in french?
Feminine too, like all the machines
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.
In my language we have genders for every noun. But it is trivially deducted from the spelling/pronunciation of that noun.
Tell me the Gender of Nutella, then :)
La nutella (she) y el (he) yogurt.
Nutella – female, Yogurt – male.
curious: but why? is there a formula or is it a combination of memorization with relations? ie: “i dont remember the gender of a trash can but I know a cooking pot is male and I cook like trash so a trash can is male?”
usually if it ends in “a” it’s feminine versus “o” for masculine, but there are exceptions for that too!
interesting. language is interesting.
And easy. For example “futbolista” is “female football player”, because it ends in “a”, and “futbolista” is “male football player” because… Wait what?
Another easy example is “mar” (sea). It’s clearly masculine. Except if you’re a poet in love with the sea and you make it female because “no homo” I guess.
OK, the sea is fluid (pun intended), makes sense. What about the computer? “Computadora” is femenine. But it’s synonym “ordenador” is masculine. So it’s a property of the word, not what it represents. This creates a rare case when someone use the english “desktop” to refer to the computer, but still inherit the female from “computadora”, so it’s “la desktop”.
Or my favorite, Mano (hand), witch is strong so obviously male. But if it’s little hand (manita) then it’s not strong so female. Except in some counties were remains male.
Next week in "WTF is wrong with Spanish: ser and estar (“to be” and “to be, but like different”)
Last letter/sound matters. Some – female, some – male, some – neutral (we have 3 grammatical genders in my language)
“matters” but curious where the logic or rules come from and is it harder than expected for folks who cannot hear the sound?
logic or rules come from
That is a “natural” language. Not C++ or Esperanto. No logic. Just bullshit and idiocy.
is it harder than expected for folks who cannot hear the sound?
Absolutely trivial for anyone. If the word ends with “a”, it is female. If any consonant – male, “o” – neutral.
interesting. i know there are some linguistics books out there I may look into any about this. appreciated the replies!
Nah pal it’s le Nutella. Don’t ask me why cause I don’t know. The word ending in ‘a’ isn’t a valid argument because you don’t drink une Fanta do you? Or do you?
Is the gender of yogurt under debate in Germany? I am only aware of Nutella and butter. Yogurt was always male.
According to Duden, Joghurt may have any gender. I agree with you though that it should be der Joghurt. Edit: It seems like die/das Joghurt is mostly used outside Germany.
What is it with the Austrians always stirring up shit?
so much pain
