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>Unlike French, there are very few words where changing the gender has a different meaning Being French myself I'm curious what makes you say that. I can't thi

by simias 8y ago

>Unlike French, there are very few words where changing the gender has a different meaning Being French myself I'm curious what makes you say that. I can't think of many nouns that change meaning if you swap their gender. They exist but I never thought that it was common enough to cause issues. For the most part I can understand strangers just fine even if get the genders wrong. "J'ai mis la téléphone dans le voiture qui est garé devant le maison" sounds obviously broken but absolutely unambiguous. Also, French having only two genders means that you'll get it right at least half the time if you guess randomly, while in German you'd only have a 1/3 success rate, so there's that... >I agree absolutely with not trying to map German propositions to English ones. That's definitely true and it's not just with English <> German unfortunately, it's true with every language I've studied. Even among Romance languages there are significant differences (for instance "to dream of" is "rêver de" in French but "sonhar em/com" in Portuguese, and then there's the whole "por/para" distinction that doesn't really exist in French). Similarly I'm currently trying to learn Russian and that's one of many difficulties with the language (made even worse because you need to learn the right preposition but also what case it calls for).

datdata 8y ago
What about if I say 'J'ai mis la téléphone dans la peau" instead of 'j'ai mis le téléphone dans le pot"?! I find in french that there is always another meaning behind a noun and it is easy to slip up.
- close04 8y ago
  But that's using a whole different noun, albeit one that sounds similar. In this case using the correct gender won't help, especially if the sentence could make sense with both nouns.
  - datdata 8y ago
    They are homophones so they are different nouns but have the same sound. The only audible difference is the article gender. I think the original point was the (audible) gender doesn't change the meaning much in German vs French.
- simias 8y ago
  I hadn't thought about homophones, that's a good point (and due to our quirky phonology there are many of those in French). That being said even in proper French we lose the distinction in the plural and I don't think that's really much of an issue, "le" and "la" both become "les": "les peaux" and "les pots" are pronounced exactly the same. I believe German does the same thing with plural "die". Clearly if you told me the strictly correct sentence "les téléphones sont dans les pots" I would never wonder if you meant "the phones are in the pots" or "the phones are in the skins" because we don't generally put phones in people's skins (yet).
BoppreH 8y ago
Not sure what you mean about "sonhar em/com". In this case em" is used to depict the medium, while "com" regards the subject. For example, "sonhar em alemão" means "to dream in German" (e.g. everyone talks in German), while "sonhar com alemão" means "to dream about German" (e.g. you dreamed you were in class).
- simias 8y ago
  In Portuguese you can also use "em" in sentences like "sonhou em regressar ao Brasil" (quoting an example from the Wiktionary). In French we would say "J'ai rêvé de retourner au Brésil", the literal translation with "en" would be nonsensical.

by simias 8y ago

datdata 8y ago

What about if I say 'J'ai mis la téléphone dans la peau" instead of 'j'ai mis le téléphone dans le pot"?! I find in french that there is always another meaning behind a noun and it is easy to slip up.

close04 8y ago
But that's using a whole different noun, albeit one that sounds similar. In this case using the correct gender won't help, especially if the sentence could make sense with both nouns.
- datdata 8y ago
  They are homophones so they are different nouns but have the same sound. The only audible difference is the article gender. I think the original point was the (audible) gender doesn't change the meaning much in German vs French.
simias 8y ago
I hadn't thought about homophones, that's a good point (and due to our quirky phonology there are many of those in French). That being said even in proper French we lose the distinction in the plural and I don't think that's really much of an issue, "le" and "la" both become "les": "les peaux" and "les pots" are pronounced exactly the same. I believe German does the same thing with plural "die". Clearly if you told me the strictly correct sentence "les téléphones sont dans les pots" I would never wonder if you meant "the phones are in the pots" or "the phones are in the skins" because we don't generally put phones in people's skins (yet).

BoppreH 8y ago

Not sure what you mean about "sonhar em/com". In this case em" is used to depict the medium, while "com" regards the subject. For example, "sonhar em alemão" means "to dream in German" (e.g. everyone talks in German), while "sonhar com alemão" means "to dream about German" (e.g. you dreamed you were in class).

simias 8y ago
In Portuguese you can also use "em" in sentences like "sonhou em regressar ao Brasil" (quoting an example from the Wiktionary). In French we would say "J'ai rêvé de retourner au Brésil", the literal translation with "en" would be nonsensical.