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Washing machines have genders?
Yes, female in german, idc about french but i suspect it’s the same.
Is it stupid we’ve done this for all nouns? Yes.
Do I judge you subconsciously if you use it wrong? Also unfortunately yes.
Same as the dish washer.
Depends on which word you use. At least in German.
No, it’s masculine in German and French.
Die Spühlmaachiene
Die Waschmaschine die
Die Bart die
Doesn’t French have ‘la’ and ‘le’ as well?
Yes, that’s the point. You need to memorize which words go with la and which with le. Or der/die/das for German. Or no articles for Slavic languages but the declination and other words in the sentence (selection of pronouns, forms of adjectives and sometimes verbs) depend on the gender.
If I remember correctly from my German class in highschool, the rule of thumb was if it’s an inanimate object use the feminine Die. That was in the mid 90s and I haven’t spoken German since, so that with a grain of salt.
Wrong
The more accurate rules of thumb are based on word endings. -e or -in suggest it’s feminine, -er or -or that it’s masculine, and -chen or -ling that it’s neutral. Such hints only work for about 30 % of words but some are close to 100% accurate.
It’s machina lavatoria in latin and obviously femal for your grammar.
How aggregious is misgendering items in other languages? I assume it’s no big deal and may not even be worth correcting most of the time?
Every once in a while there are two words that are written the same but have different gender, if you use the wrong article it’ll get confusing for a second and you’ll have to figure out from context what was actually meant.
Female in Russian, because the word machine/машина ends with A, and so any machine, from tattoo gun to steam engine is female gendered. I always thought French and German worked in somewhat similar manner?
I didn’t learn of any rhyme or reason to it in German when I took classes on it. In fact, in a few cases, the gender changes the meaning of the word. Der See und die See, for example. One means lake and the other means sea/ocean.
That’s a rather rare occurence. Most often, only the grammar will be incorrect if you use the wrong article.
There’s more shenanigans with “umfahren” and “umfahren”, where Intonation matters. One means “drive around”, the other “run over”.
Also one is a strong and one is a weak verb, meaning that in certain cases, one will be split apart:
Ich umfahre jemanden: I drive around someone.
Ich fahre jemanden um: I run someone over.
i don’t recall there being any rhyme or reason to gender in german, but it’s been many years since i studied. i do remember that the gender of any word like ____-machine would be whatever the gender is for machine.
The only actual rule I’m aware of is diminutives (i.e. words ending in -chen or -lein) always being neuter (das). This is also the reason why it’s das Mädchen (girl) and das Fräulein.
The rest is arbitrary, and sometimes there’s even regional variations.
Also a neverending discussion around some “newer” words or brands such as Ketchup, Nutella, etc.
it is in German too.
It is die Waschmaschine. and a Steam Engine ist die Dampfmaschine. And it is a very straight foreard naming convention. Just add what kind of machine it is to the front of the noun.
This is my go to response when people are trying to claim that English is hard… Well at least I don’t have to remember what gender has randomly been assigned to every noun I want to use.
German has this too.
