In French, it’s ‘le pénis,’ but nobody says that. ‘Dick,’ is feminine (la bite.)
Also, ‘vagina’ is masculine, but ‘pussy’ is feminine, because if you were to say ‘le chat’ it would mean a cat, but by feminising the word, it becomes ‘la chatte,’ meaning pussy.
As someone who grew up Anglophone, I actually find gendered languages much more precise. On the other hand, in order to make yourself understood one must have a rich vocabulary, because the definitions of words are often more narrow than in English.
And don’t even get me started on phrasal verbs… English is messy.
I actually find gendered languages much more precise.
Just never ask a group of Germans what the singular article of Nutella is.
Put some yogurt on that!
You’d better back down before this blows up or i break down
Pure poetry.
back up - actual phrase
break up - actual phrase
Why no blow down?
I don’t get the weirdness of phrasal verbs? It’s a basic staple of every Indoeuropean language to generate verbs by tacking on prepositions. Ok, it’s a bit weird to use prepositions after the word, but that’s just standard Germanic separable verbs that are a bit regulized. So what?
They’re just so ubiquitous in English. In my experience, people coming from the Romance languages have a very hard time with them, because most of the actions they describe are a single verb in their mother tongues. Imagine having to remember what two words mean, but then also having to remember that when you use the two words together, they form a distinct, sometimes even unrelated, meaning.
And there’s thousands.
Well, Romance languages have thousands, too, like e.g. French poser and sup-poser, dé-poser, re-poser, trans-poser, pro-poser, im-poser, ex-poser, pré-poser, anté-poser, op-poser, super-poser, com-poser, juxta-poser, ap-poser, dis-poser, postposer,
If I call up a random French or Spanish article on wikipedia, a decent amount, if not the majority of verbs (not counting auxilliary verbs) are compounds. Somehow Romance speakers seem to have lost the ability to spot them, a Mexican coworker of mine was absolutely convinced Spanish does not have compound verbs as well.
Oh – I see. The Romance prepositions have changed. Knowing Latin I cannot not recognise the loads of compound verbs, but with sur, de, derriere, travers, par, en, hors, avant and so on the compounds are not recognisable any longer and our poor Romance friends have to learn all the words by themselves instead of nice semilogical groups.
I would love to see that discuss
Sorry, I don’t understand what I am seeing here. Is that someone xeeting a screenshot of someone reporting to Duolingo that penis should be feminine, not masculine in Spanish?
Both! Un lave-linge. Or, une machine à laver.
¿Por qué no los dos?
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.)
One of the few genders German and French agree on is that a machine is female.
So, if a man is considered to be a machine he is female in that field.
“Europeans solve trans bathroom problem, whoever does the laundry, pees in the ladies room”
The one that is sent from the future that consists of living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
hey, atleast you dont have 14 noun cases.
One of my languages has three genders for living creatures, and two genders for items. Those genders are all different from each other: humans and other living beings are male/female/living neutral, things are item neutral/item neutral. An item neutral plural is also used for groups of living beings, but not for all groups of items.
One item neutral singular can in some instances be used for a living being regardless of their gender. The other item neutral would be insulting if used about living beings, and especially dehumanising to humans (wish someone had told me this sooner).
I have no idea when to use which item neutral. Locals keep correcting me or almost imperceptibly wincing when I get it wrong, so when I want to sound more fluent I just use the item plural for singulars as well - it seems less annoying for some reason.
Oh, and for one of the item neutrals, if you accidentally use the other item neutral it means the plural of the first one. Kill me now, lol.
Which godforsaken language is that?
Abyssal I assume.
So Luxembourgish?
You can’t just make stuff up.
All good examples in comments, but in this case it’s Swedish. And if not by god then I’ll forsake it.
Which language is that?
Swedish. I have family there so I visit a lot, but I’m not completely fluent.
I do not respect gendered languages. I will not apologize for misgendering a pencil. The right form of “the” for an apple is “the apple.”
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)
Bonjour
you don’t. they call you.
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!
English is such a poor language that they only have the article The and nouns without genders.
Seethe and cope.
My native language doesn’t have any articles and there is no distinction between he and she.
May I ask what language that may be?
It’s Persian.
I’ve noticed a lot of gendered words seemingly have roots in Arabic: the words for paternal uncle, paternal aunt, maternal aunt, and maternal uncle for example. I guess the neutrality is something that survived of our ancient culture.
The history (of Persia and the language) is deeply fascinating, but also confusing, and at times you’ll come across a lot of contradictions. There are so many lies and different perspectives. I regret my ignorance when it comes to this topic.
Thanks (:
Japanese?
Nope. It’s Persian (also known as Farsi, or Parsi).
Persian’s roots are actually closer to English than Arabic: Persian is an Indo-European language, same as English, while Arabic is a Semitic language.
How progressive.
bullpies!
i don’t like English, but those are things it does right!
who the hell needs TWELVE definite articles?!
Speakers of enlightened languages?
And they still have trouble learning it.
So poor they held to sell off cases as well.
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”
Is that when they decided to make counting past 70 complicated?
That’s actually older than French itself - a relic from Gaulish.
TIL, thanks
no, I’m afraid I could not shift the blame on this one. Particularly when french speakers in Switzerland and Belgium show alternatives for a long time
That’s four goddamn numbers in a row!
Check what’s between the legs of the washing machine.
female of course
Uh-oh. I’ve heard this one before.
What do you mean you heard it before, it’s a brand new?
And for some reason it seems to be quite jarring for french native speakers if somebody uses the wrong gender. I have tried to learn french for like 10 years and I have received absolutely no feelings about either the right or wrong genders. Both of them always sound just as fine.
la baguette? le baguette? No difference. But that’s how it works of course.
Hahaha France dumb because democracy!
