• hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      15·
      5 days ago

      Latviešu seems like the same

      Finnish is so easy; anything is “it”, including humans.
      Only exception is pets and sometimes other people’s kids unless they’re annoying

      • zaphod@sopuli.xyz
        11·
        5 days ago

        All machines are. I’d say it’s at least 90% completely arbitrary, what makes streets, tables, power, or cars feminine? What makes some countries feminine and some masculine? The only thing you could believably argue that it’s historic sexism is job titles, because most of them are masculine with derived feminine words.

        • loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works
          7·
          4 days ago

          I believe you’re wrong to assume the gender is a property of the thing the word refers too, it’s a property of the word itself. Synonyms can have different genders, like “vélo” is masculine and “bicylette” is feminine, both mean “bicycle”. “Vagin” is masculine. There’s no 100% consistent mean to determine a words gender, but helpful patterns that are right most of the time would be more in the word’s ending.

          To take the example of “machine”, I can’t think of any word ending in “-ine” that isn’t feminine, safe for some Russian names.

          Also, if a noun doesn’t and in “-e”, it’s most likely masculine. But the reciprocal isn’t true!

        • TheYojimbo@lemmy.world
          5·
          5 days ago

          What ? All machines are female?

          Une machine à laver ok, but un lave linge, un lave vaisselle, un sèche linge, un robot de cuisine, un four…

          Hell I can think of more “males” than “females” machines.

  • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyz
    17·
    5 days ago

    They’re okay, this one is a classic.

    I guess the English equivalent is “trying to remember how to pronounce"ou” in this word"

  • gaael@lemm.ee
    8·
    4 days ago

    Fu -ish facts: bra is feminine, purse is masculine, mustache is feminine, boobs is masculine, dick is feminine, vagina is masculine, love is masculine when singular and feminine when plural.

    Don’t look for meaning or logic, our langiage is a clusterfuck (that ot transactivists have been working at it for centuries and doing a great job).

    Have fun learning and remember no native speaker cares if you misgender an item, we usually find it funny and/or cute ;)

  • Imhotep@lemmy.world
    6·
    4 days ago

    My mom is Dutch but lives in France

    She speaks and writes better French than 99% of Frenchmen. Better than me, and I was born here

    But once in a while (excessively rarely, maybe 5 times a year) that brainiac will use the wrong gender. And boy does it sound weird

    Meanwhile even the dumbest of Le Pen voters will always get it right

    There’s no mastering it if you’re not native

    • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
      11·
      5 days ago

      I’d argue German is harder for genders (there are 3 with neutral). It’s nice that german at least pronouncs every letter in the word

  • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
    4·
    5 days ago

    just learn some dialect where they largely drop the genders, there’s gotta be one, and as a bonus i’m sure you’ll sound slightly more native

    • WFH@lemm.ee
      4·
      4 days ago

      Yeah, nah. It’s not like in Scandinavia where half the dialects lost the feminine and half the others look at you like you killed their mother for saying “en bok”.

      Most French “dialects” vary mostly in prononciation and a few regional words or expressions. Partly because French is a heavily regulated language, and partly because most dialects are relatively recent anyway. In the early 20th century the central government erased all regional languages and forced standard French on all society.

  • christopher@programming.dev
    3·
    4 days ago

    There are some memory techniques where you tell yourself a story about the word where you can use some particular person, action, or object to represent the gender. Though these techniques work better if you have the ability to visualize. So for words that are female gender, you could always put your sister in the story, and for the male gendered words your uncle always appears.

    • Lazycog@sopuli.xyzOPM
      2·
      4 days ago

      Ohh that’s a new tip for me, thanks! At this point I’m ready to try even a ritual…