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Do native German speakers confuse noun genders? (2023)
- simonblack 3y agoSome would, those who don't have sufficient education. People who have at least five years of education probably wouldn't make that mistake. It's probably very much like the English speakers who can't work out when to use 'Your' or 'You're', and 'There', 'They're', or 'Their', and again 'To', Too', or 'Two'. All of those things spring basically from a lack of understanding, which comes from a lack of education.
- gus_massa 3y agoI agree that the examples in your second paragraphs are caused by lack of understanding of grammar. But the gender of objects is essentially a arbitrary random assignation. It's just a table that people must memorize. We have a similar table of gender for objects in Spanish. There are some rules, for example "beauty" is an abstract noun so it's neutral "lo bello". But in most cases it's just arbitrary, for example "hand" is femenine "la mano" (and that's a tricky one, because most nouns tat end with an "o" are masculine).
- simonblack 3y ago* It's just a table that people must memorize.* Exactly. And there also some rules about what things are feminine and what things are masculine. You learn those rules at school. This still goes back to the amount of education you receive in your life determines how well you get to know your own language. "I done went" is perfectly understandable to an English speaker. But some people know that it is bad English, some people think it is bad English but don't know why it is, and some people think it's good because they don't know what actually is correct.