Uh-oh. I’ve heard this one before.
no rules, no sens, only disdain
L’Académie Française existed since the 18th century to make the language too complex “for the common and the women”
Female. Obviously. 😏
Yes, but what if you’re a man married to a man? Which one is the washing machine? 🤌
My body is a MACHINE that turns DIRTY things into CLEAN things. /skeleton-deadlift-meme
I am.
(j/k; I’m pretty poor at cleaning things.)
Pierre-Frédérique-Antoine and Mike having llunch after french class. Mike : Oh wregaarde un mouche! PFA : non, on dit UNE mouche. Mike: wow t’as de bons zyeux!
How do you call a herd of washing machines?
On the phone?
remember to raise those washing machines and feed them the best laundry detergent you can! i recommend arm and hammer (partly because of the logo - the logo was used a lot in de leonism, and armand hammer supports socialism)
Is it possible to bash your way though this, as a foreigner, by getting the gender wrong half the time? Are mis-genedered nouns sometimes homophones for completely different things, or can you be understood with bad grammar, regardless?
I say this since sometimes “bad/wrong” is less about understanding and more about “that sounds funny” or “nobody talks like that.”
You will be understood, it will just give people a small pause.
Sometimes it may cause confusion, like “the phone (he) went through the washing machine (she) and now <she/he> is broken” changes meaning if you get the pronoun wrong. But then if you are used to disambiguate thIs kind of situation - and you have to in english - it shouldn’t happen too often
I asked my Francophone buddy that grew up in backwoods Quebec how the hell he kept it all in his head. He said that he never bothered.
If it had an “e” on the end, he just assumed it was feminine.
If he was drunk, he didn’t give a single flying tabernak.
How does anyone manage to keep allll the words pronunciation and spelling they know is already amazing, craming pronouns on top of that isn’t much worse
It’s likely the same as English spelling. Just years and years of repeated exposure, and you eventually pick up most of it through osmosis
I’ve found that most of the time, just pick the most sexist answer you can think of, and you’ll typically be right!
I really don’t like gendered languages.
You’ll be right 50% of the times. Or 33% in german. And it doesn’t match between languages. Like, “cat” is a she in german and a he in french. Often synonyms have different genders : une lettre/un courrier (both mean a mail).
I think the issue is that you are searching your mind for correlations between gender and sexism-related, which is often easier than searching for non-correlation. If I ask you “quick, think of a singer that wears leather”, you’ll find one instantly. But if I ask “quick, find a singer that doesn’t wear leather” it takes a while, even though there more of them.
If you want a better impression of the phenomenon, open a dictionary, go over words one by one and count the points.
And also “organ” (the instrument) in french is male when singular and female when plural. “C’est un bel orgue” and “Ce sont de belles orgues”.
You’d love German – there is absolutely zero system or logic behind what word has which of the three genders.
There are some general guidelines, which hold true more often than not: https://germanwithlaura.com/noun-gender/
For example, planets that don’t end with an e and which aren’t Venus tend to be male
Yeah, no, it doesn’t make sense:
Der Mann (the man - male article)
Die Frau (the woman - female article)
Der Junge (the boy - male article)
Das Mädchen (the girl - neutral article)
Like, come on gendered articles, you had one job.
Anything with -chen/-klein (a diminutive) is neuter.
E.g. in addition to Mädchen there is Jungchen (~“youngster”) that is also neuter rather than masculine.
doesn’t work at all, completely breaks down for the planetoids and moons…
which makes sense, since those names are not german, which is why german grammar doesn’t apply to them.
latin loanwords work the same way in german as they do in latin: completely at random and just have to be memorized…but at least they do follow the gender of the deity, so if you know your greco-roman pantheon it’s pretty easy!
edit: also a very weird example, with a weird rule about ending in “e”; venus and earth (erde) are the only female planets…
three?!
German is woke
It totally isn’t unfortunately, the gender neutral pronoun (if that’s what it’s called?) doesn’t work for humans.
oh, it does work…
…if you’re bigoted enough.
Yep. Masculine, feminine, and neuter. It’s annoyingly hard to learn. Plus all the other adjectives and such change to match. It’s wild.
Polish also has three. She, he, it/this.
I think most slavic languages in general, not just polish.
I only studied french for a short time, but I feel like that really doesn’t work for french:
- chemisier, blouse, is masculine
- ceinture, belt, is feminine
Those were the two onces I could remember like this half a year after ending my french studies, but could be that those are only two uncommon counterexamples.
Also, both of these are what you would “expect” in German (die Bluse, der Gürtel)
Well it works for this example, because lave-vaisselle is feminine. The root vasselle (dishes) is feminine.
vaiselle is actually inhereting its gender in an unrelated manner.
It comes from Latin vāscellum which is a Neuter noun.
But the specific form that gave rise to vaiselle was the collective plural of that noun vāscella. source
And it’s a common pattern that in vulgar latin, (what gave rise to french), collective plural nouns were interpreted as feminine. I think this is a general tendency and unrelated to the noun’s meaning. The reason often given is that neuter plural endings and feminine singular endings were the same in Latin.
BTW; this is also the latin root of the english word vessel.
(PS: I agree with you that gender in language is problematic and I prefer non gendered as well).
That’s what I love about my native Hungarian, even pronouns are ungendered.
Everything else is stupid complicated though. We have tonal harmony to worry about instead.
I also found that if you really want to be understood in French, you have to force yourself into an over the top, bordering on ridiculous French accent.
So the key to speaking good French is to default to the most sexist position possible and intentionally speak like an asshole.
Mark Twain also struggled with language
To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female—tomcats included, of course; a person’s mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and NOT according to the sex of the individual who wears it—for in Germany all the women wear either male heads or sexless ones; a person’s nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven’t any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.
Dogs are male? In my language dogs are female. So I guess there is no standard for gendered language.
It is said that when English went from old English (which was gendered) to modern English, part of the problem was that the genders of the Germanic roots didn’t match the genders of the French influences so the people chose to just skip it all together.
Basically the last good decision in the creation of English
Dunno about German but in french dogs are male or female depending on their actual gender (obviously the female word has been adopted as a slur towards women, to be fair sometimes the masculine also is used that way for men).
The male word is also used as slur for men in Québec. It’s usually accompanied by copious religious profanity and a few tasteful adjectives.
- C’est un ostie de câlisse de chien sale à marde, Tabarnak!
In German, dogs are male by default (der Hund can be used as a generic term for both male and female dogs), but bitches are female (die Hündin). Cats are female by default (die Katze), but tomcats are male (der Kater).
We do not use Hündin as a slur for women, but Hund can be used as a slur for men.
German has both genders for dogs, but since the variants look (and sound) slightly different, it’s not instantly obvious:
Der Hund - a male dog
Die Hündin - a female dog
I like when the gender changes what the noun is. Here are a couple Spanish examples: la cometa = the kite (feminine) or el cometa = the comet (masculine) la papa = the potato (feminine) or el papa = the Pope (masculine).
Swahili has 18 genders, though only 16 are in active use.
Oh hey, someone that used gender in regards to Spanish correctly.
I say that in regards to one of my Spanish teachers from high school who would always grade us wrong when we say male/female instead of masculine/feminine. One day he explained that by saying “Objects have gender! People have sex!”
I didn’t know Swahili was that progressive.
La machine à laver
Le lave linge
It’s beautiful 🙃
Common nonbinary French W
Y’all would love Irish. There is no word for “yes” or “no”.
How do you say “no means no”
I’m a bit rusty but I think it’s “Feck’off ya’cunt”.
Only parents, priests, those in front of children or those in pleasant company say feck. We’re more or less married to the Aussies with our love of the vulgar words. 🇮🇪 ❤️ 🇦🇺
Eh, that’s a great question. My Irish used to be good enough that I’d be able to answer that but I’m not sure what the direct translation would be. There is a word that’s very close to “no” which is “níl” (neel) but in general it’s short for “níl mé” (neel may - I am not).
In the present tense there is “tá” (taw) which is essentially short for “tá mé” (taw may - I am) but for example the answer to the question “Were you?” is “Ní raimh mé” (nee r-ow may) which is “I was not” but it is contextual. The pronunciation of “raimh” also varies by each of the 4 provinces along with every other word which is confusing as fuck. Some would say “rev” for “raimh”.
In general it’s the positive or negative of the verb though - were you? I was. Did you? I did. Will you? I will. Did she? She did etc.
Someone with better Irish may be along to hopefully make a show of me.
edit: Google translate says “ciallaíonn ní nach bhfuil” is “no means no” but there is no way in hell any actual Irish speaker would say those words when the context is so simple.
“ní nach bhfuil” (nee noch will) is “no is not”, kinda. ciallaíonn is “means” straight up though.
In general it’s the positive or negative of the verb though - were you? I was. Did you? I did. Will you? I will. Did she? She did etc.
So the verb has a negative declension, or is it just some kind of conjunction that negates the verb?
Either way, that’s kind of beautiful. English has a problem where one can ask a compound question, and replying “no” doesn’t clarify a damn thing. This would be impossible in Irish, since you’d have to pick one or some combination of questions to reply to, as the verb-form is required.
So the verb has a negative declension, or is it just some kind of conjunction that negates the verb?
It’s so long since I used declension that I honestly can’t remember it’s use but you repeat the verb but in the positive or negative form and there are differences if that makes sense?
Like “Do you understand?” is “I understand” and “I do not understand” is a little different.
I’m teaching my youngest lad Irish and I’ll regularly ask him “An dtuigeann tú” (on diggin too) and he’ll respond with “tuigim” (“tig-im” - “I understand” (which is strictly a contraction)).
edit: The negative would be “Ní thuigim” which we would pronounce as “nee higim” (I do not understand) so there’s a definite change in the word for the negative.
edit 2: The answers to “were you?” would be bhí mé “vee may” (I was) and Ní raimh mé “nee r-ow may” (I was not) so it is quite different to answer in the positive or negative.
This is a better response than I could have hoped for; consider my curiosity sated, and I am now fascinated. Thank you for sharing this.
You’re very welcome :)
“Feck aff ye daft coont.”
Here’s a simple trick:
Apply misogyny and sexism /s
Doesn’t work for le lave-linge though.
Buuuut cars are a men thing aren’t they? And yet it’s la voiture… Curious…
on dit un char.
See… You have to get into the mind of a straight man from the 1950s and ask yourself one of 2 questions: Is this a woman’s thing? Or would I fuck this thing? Cars are considered “beautiful” and “sexy” and therefore fuckable by a man. I hope this has been a good lesson in outrageous sexism.
I would not fuck a chevy hhr. A subaru justy on the other hand…
Thoughts on Toyota Crown?
And yet ‘ship’ is masculine in French, despite even in genderless English being referred to by sailors throughout history as a ‘she’
It is masculine because a ship is full of seamen.
🥁🐍
But they still name ships with women’s names, I stopped thinking too hard about this…
So are washing machines, apparently.
Don’t put your dick in that
Help me, stepsister…
La règle trente-trois, I see. Consider me enlightened!
Edit: merde non c’est la règle trente-quatre bordel de chiottes
If you can make mysoginistic jokes about it, then it works : men get in cars just like in women. => so it’s “la”
😏
For all of the shit people talk about the English language, this is a big thing I appreciate about it. What the hell was the point of even gendering random things from the start? In German, the main gendering are die, der, and das with das being gender neutral. I would like to see a world where in scenarios like that they just move everything to das.
I think it’s to make it less ambiguous.
In English you just use the same word and figure it out from context. Someone else gave some other Spanish examples but I like “right” (direction) = “la derecha” vs “right” (human rights) = “los derechos”.
Of course there’s still so many variants of meaning that grammatical gender doesn’t help much.
Now if you would level up once more and stopped having gendered pronouns.
That’s the ultimate level 😀
I’m just happy that washing machine has the same gender in French as my language and not a different one
