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Not a native German speaker, but yes - it is my understanding that any German word ending in -chen is neuter. (My guess: as the -chen ending is used to signify
by lb1lf 9y ago
Not a native German speaker, but yes - it is my understanding that any German word ending in -chen is neuter.
(My guess: as the -chen ending is used to signify that it is a smaller version of the stem of the word, this takes precedence over the gender of the stem - and then some German at some point decided that such smaller items were neuters and be done with it.)
- Vinnl 9y agoSame holds true in Dutch - although male and female words share the same article ("de"), neuter words use a different one ("het"), diminutive words (ending in -je) are always neuter, and we usually say "meisje" for girls. Hence girl is neuter.
- lb1lf 9y agoThank you! I was wondering whether I could use ‘diminutive’ or not in that context. I happen to be Norwegian, by the way - and Dutch happens to be quite fascinating in that there are enough similarities with Norwegian and German for me to be able to read Dutch well enough to understand what is going on - I’d never read a novel in Dutch, but newspapers are fair game.
- Vinnl 9y agoTo be fair, I'm not sure if I could either, so don't assume it is valid just because I used it. I tried to look it up, but didn't get anything conclusive about it within two minutes so I just assumed people would understand what I meant. It's really fascinating that you're able to understand Dutch newspapers though! Despite knowing quite some German as well, Norwegian doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. I can correctly guess some Swedish (which I seem to recall is similar?) words when written down some of the time, but far from often enough to be able to follow newspaper articles.
- jdmichal 9y agoIt's definitely a diminutive form, along with -lein, which operates the same way regarding gender and umlaut.