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I think this is misleading: Dialects exist but they don’t change the rules of standard German grammar. In German, only “die Butter” is correct, regardless of wh
by klmr 8y ago
I think this is misleading: Dialects exist but they don’t change the rules of standard German grammar. In German, only “die Butter” is correct, regardless of where you are. Upper Bavarians may use “der Butter” but there’s an understanding that this is dialect, and not correct German. It’s fine in daily usage but not in more formal speech or in writing.
(A better example is “Mus”, which has multiple correct genders.)
German is a lot more prescriptive than English. This is only different for neologisms and anglicisms (“Newsletter”), where a generally accepted gender hasn’t been established through usage yet (Duden now lists “Newsletter” as masculine, but both “die Newsletter” and “das Newsletter” were common until recently).
- donjoe 8y agoIt depends on the word. Der oder das Radio for example: das Radio(gerät) oder der Radio(empfänger) defines the article. The same can be distinguished for butter: the word's origin might originate from Greek or Latin - depending on which language you choose, you'd get a different article.
- klmr 8y agoThat’s not true. Only “das Radio” is correct Standard German. Only “die Butter” is correct Standard German. Other forms may well be common, and accepted as dialect. But they’re not Standard German, which means they’re not taught in school (except by mistake), and are not acceptable in official communications. You may not like that German is so overly prescriptivist (I have issues with it) but it’s a simple fact. Additionally, your explanation about the origin of the gender of “Butter” is entirely apocryphal: the original Greek/Latin gender has at best an indirect influence on the gender of the modern German word (and in fact both were neuter: βούτυρον vs butyrum).