The german language has something called the "generic masculinum," meaning that all "workers" are male (unless you use the female version explicitly.) Some peop

The german language has something called the "generic masculinum," meaning that all "workers" are male (unless you use the female version explicitly.) Some people have taken issue with that recently, i.e., they want to replace it with a generic femininum. I think it's somewhat naive to attempt to change languages like that, but hey, feel free to give it a shot. I'm not sure what the rule for foreign words is (we have many of them, latin, greek, french, etc.), but their gender seems to be inferred from the base word (that's not a word, is it?). E.g., "internet" (and "network" respectively) is neutrum because the german word for "network" is as well. Same for "printer." "Email" and "connection" are femininum because the german words for "mail" and "connection" are as well. I suspect that words like "email" might actually not be female, but plural (both share the same pronoun) because the german word for "mail" is one of these words that don't have a singular form (think "fish"). Oddly enough, the word "post" (in the sense of a forum post), even though it is literally the same word we have for "mail" (which is still femininum, "die Post"), is (generic?) masculinum. I guess that's what happens when multiple languages inherit a word from a language, change it over time, and then share the new words later. Buttons are obviously male (you already know why). Some words fall back to the generic masculinum however, even though they do have neutral german equivalents (e.g., "account"). I wish I could tell you why. Anyway, languages are hard. Let's talk about computers instead. --- Btw: I hate the fact that my french neighbours have a weird nationalistic attitude when it comes to their language. French isn't exactly the greatest language on this planet. (Germans get to choose between french and latin as a third language.)