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I have likened this effect to “what sounds right.” I am curious about something with German, and would love feedback from native German speakers: “gendering” o
by dclowd9901 2y ago
I have likened this effect to “what sounds right.”
I am curious about something with German, and would love feedback from native German speakers: “gendering” on German words seems to be largely arbitrary (as opposed to the romantic languages where gendering seems to align with how the culture associates the word to a gender). My suspicion, that has “felt” correct in most cases, is that gendering in German words is largely an artifact of which article sounds the most correct with the word. Sort of how we might use “a/an” with words that have consonant or vowel starting sounds in English.
Is there any truth to this supposition?
- FabHK 2y agoDoesn't sound plausible to me. It does seem arbitrary more than related to the sound. There is der Titel and der Tisch, but die Tinte and die Tasche, das Tier but die Tür, etc. ETA: Having said that, certain endings strongly indicate a specific gender, e.g. for masculine: -or, -ling, -ner, -smus, -er, -ich, -ist, -ant, and -us. See e.g. here: https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/german-easy-learning/how-do-you-work-out-the-gender-of-a-german-noun https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/german-easy-learning/h...
- dclowd9901 2y agoThank you for your insights!
- inglor_cz 2y agoThere is a lot of randomness in linguistic gendering ... Czech genders are rather different from German genders, even though we are neighbours. Der Frosch (M, "frog") vs. ta žába (F). Das Messer (N, "knife") vs. ten nůž (M). Die Tat (F, "deed, act") vs. ten čin (M).
- dclowd9901 2y agoI’ve heard Czech spoken at full speed and I’m pretty sure it’s one language I’ll never actually learn
- inglor_cz 2y agoRight now I am in Bilbao and I am pretty sure the same way about Basque. It is more of a stream cipher.