I don’t remember most of the grammatically correct genders, but when I was trying to learn them I had the distinct impression that stereo-typically manly nouns were masculine and stereo-typically womanly things were feminine.
I have heard nonbinary people find neuter as being offensive because it’s infantilizing them. At least that’s how it was explained to me.
I haven’t heard anything about that but that’s really interesting. Do you know how they prefer to be addressed?
This is arguably subjective, but I think making masculine and feminine words neuter is the only way to counteract the inherent sexism of gendered nouns. If you make everything masculine, you’re still tacitly supporting the previous categorization of masculine nouns as correct, and vice versa for making every noun feminine.
*Aromantic
Your washing machine still tosses (clothing) salad on a regular basis.
I don’t know how German compares to French or Spanish, but in German things can be masculine, feminine, or neutral. What I do—which is partially as a protest, and partially out of laziness—is to assume every non-person noun is neutral.
It works surprisingly well in IT where basically all nouns are neutral, but I probably sound like Kevin from The Office in every other context.
Meh, it’s a hobby. Lots of people talk about their hobbies.
Still a funny comic, though.
SMH my head
That’s what my “friend” did. Reddit banned every account he used on his phone at once, but with a different IP, desktop browser, and cookie isolation, they haven’t noticed so far. He might sound like some professional troll, but he was actually banned for a stupid reason.
Interesting, thanks!
I took a full-year German course in university a few years ago, and by the end of that I was probably A1. I’ve forgotten most of it since then, but I could probably relearn it within a few weeks. Every time I visit my German side of the family I try to brush up on it, but that isn’t very often.
Good for you. I feel like the hardest part of German (as a non-native speaker) is regularly practicing.