Not just France, but (I think) every European and Middle Eastern language! I will never understand how they get used to that in other languages, having to know the gender of every noun. And when you invent knew words, having to pick a gender for them?

I mean, we hem and haw about not having gender neutral pronouns, and yet these other languages avoid an easy opportunity to weed out a pointlessly complex use of gender? I'm pretty sure if I grew up in one of these places, I'd push to eliminate noun gender.
 

Silas, Bob - you both seem to be ignorant of the English language's subtle use of gender.

English has, in fact, three genders: Male, female, and neutral. In general, it uses so-called 'natural' genders, which means that most things are 'it'.

At the same time, some things are male or female, such as countries, ships, the moon, and the sun. Well, at least when you try to use the language in a pleasing manner. Computer folks tend to use gendered terminology when referring to computers - at least when referring to their own favourite computers. As do auto afficionados.

While it is true that English is probably the least gendered of all Indo-European languages, I see that as a symptom of cultural degeneration.

Many languages even differentiate between animated and unanimated things, not to mention male, female, and neither.

Picking a gender for a new word is easy, once you understand how gender works.

The use of gender is not pointless at all. I'm pretty sure that if you grew up in any of these places and pushed for the elimination of noun gender, you'd be laughed at and ridiculed as a simpleton.
 

Spanish assigns gender as well. I only took 4 years of it, but my little brother -- going on his 7th -- tells me that saying the wrong gender for a noun is one of the greatest mistakes you can make according to native speakers.
 

For what it's worth, folks, I was mostly throwing in the French thing for comedic timing before the punchline.

I didn't know each of my readers would take so much of his or her time to correct me.
 

@Anonymous: I'm aware of that use of gender. It's just that calling inanimate objects in English is a) slang (or otherwise confined to one field's jargon), b) unnecessary, and c) confined to a tiny subset of words relative to the total vocabulary.

In most cases, it also makes you look like an obsessive weirdo to call an object "she" ... unless the listener shares your obsession.

I've also lived in Germany and spoken the language there. The people there said that it would sound weird at first to move to one definite article, but they'd prefer not having to deal with noun genders.

By the way, in German, if you put an adjective before a noun, its ending depends on the noun gender AND the case AND the preceding article. Germans have privately admitted to me that when speaking, they just speed up to slur over adjective endings so they don't make an error someone can hear.
 

Oops, that should be "calling inanimate objects he/she in English is a) slang ...".
 

I just know you can insult a German speaking Scotsman by saying "Die kilt".
 

Silas, German of all languages, eh?

So you think it would help things if you would not have a different gender for der Wagen, or das Wagen? What about der See vs. die See? Das Junge vs. der Junge? Der Alte vs. die Alte? Not to mention that you would lose the ability to use nominalization in an elegant manner, wether adjectives or verbs.

I have to wonder about the educational level / social origins / political leanings of the Germans you have been hanging out with during your time there. I have yet to meet a competent speaker of the German language who would support what you say, particularly the deliberate slurring to hide their lack of basic literacy.

Ob Deiner angegeben Bemaechtigung der deutschen Sprache haben wir doch so einige nicht voellig unbegruendete Zweifel.

I glob dat enfoch nich.
 

"And when you invent knew words, having to pick a gender for them?"

In Polish (and other Slavic languages, I wager) the gender is determined by the word's suffix.
It's pretty much automatic.
 

@Anonymous: Yes, in some cases the complexity actually helps disambiguate. So I guess you'll have to do whatever is you normally do to clarify the meaning when you say sie, which can mean she, they, or you.

And two of the people who told me about speaking quickly to cover up the adjective endings were high school teachers, which actually requires a lot of education in Germany.

"Ob Deiner angegeben Bemaechtigung der deutschen Sprache haben wir doch so einige nicht voellig unbegruendete Zweifel."

"We have some not-completely-baseless doubts about your touted mastery of the German language."?

*yawn*

(captcha: ex-pro)
 

I am so utterly unsruprised that two high-school teachers would make such comments. Becoming a high school teacher (which type of high school, by the way? Which province? Gesamtschule? Hessen? I doubt you were dealing with Gymnasium teachers from Bayern).

There was a time in German education history when Lessing's Nathan was read in the 8th grade, and when the average teacher at a Realschule was capable of at least reading Latin and Greek to some degree, not to mention master mathematics at least to the level of pre-calculus and write German decently. Those times have long past (though I am sure some of these still lurk in the halls of the occasional Gymnasium deep in the heart of Bavaria).

Today, they have Spellingreform and even teachers feel they must use Denglish and Kanakdeutsch to be more 'cool' (though derelict would be a better word).

I wonder if any of these could ever read Gorch Fock without a translation guide, or understand Grimmelshausen.

In other words, auf die unmassgeblichen Meinungen solcher Bildungskanaillien die den heutigen deutschen Lehrstand ausmachen, kann man nur pfeiffen.
 

Ivan: yes, goes for Russian, Serbian, and every other one. Gender should not be a problem for anybody with a passing interest in language. For the rest, there's always Ido.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

I think you guys didn't get the gist of the post. The poopy was a boy. Ha ha! (Cute kid!!)
 

Thank you sonicninja! The post was a real beaut, wasn't she? ("You see what I did there?")
 

Bob - Amusing post. I think it's funny that it has generated such an uproar. But, I'm going to join in...

To those defending that every noun has a gender: You say that it's easy to determine the gender of a word once you understand how gender works. So, can you explain - in simple terms - what it is that determines an inanimate object's gender? Also, if this is the case, I'd expect that there's no disagreements between languages about whether or not, say, the moon is male or female. However, there is such a disagreement. Spanish-speakers declare "la luna" to be feminine, while German speakers declare "der Mond" to be masculine. So, which language displays an erroneous understanding of gender? (Which is shocking, since it's so "easy" to understand!)
 

Lucas - there is no erroneous understanding of gender across languages. There is no universal gender (though there is universal grammar). Each language has its own logic, determined by history and culture. It takes a very deepn immersion into the language to understand that (in the philosophical sense of 'Verstehen').

Existing words have a gender assigned to them by tradition, new words receive a gender assignment based on their similarity to already existing words.

You want a formula? Sorry, there is none - this is not about formal logic, this is about aesthetics and feelin. All wishy-washy and vague, and yet - astonishingly clear.

Different languages have different ways of communicating how humans perceive this world. Standardization and simplification impoverishes language, and hence thought. Read Orwell on this.
 

The English language is relatively unique as a prominent language which does not assign gender to most nouns.

Somehow, gender is a 'bad' thing' to the egalitarian victim-mongers among us. If it's 'male' or 'female' it MUST be discriminatory against SOMEONE, right?

And 'poopies' are IN FACT 'male', and I'm proud of it.
 

@Anonymous: Actually, yes, they were teachers in a Bavaria Gymnasium -- well, Franken (Franconia), but technically it's part of Bayern now. I can't remember the dad's first name, but I remember the family name, at the wife and kids' given. I'll hook you up with them sometime.

You want a formula? Sorry, there is none - this is not about formal logic, this is about aesthetics and feelin. All wishy-washy and vague, and yet - astonishingly clear.

Wir haben schon einen Ausdrueck dafuer -- er heisst "willkuerlich".

We already have a term for that -- it's called "arbitrary".

Go describe a new concept to a German and the word given to it. Ask them what gender it should have. If there's less than 90% agreement, you're wrong. Want to test it out?
 

Other anonymous: I used to roll my eyes about gender concerns too, until I read some good points by Douglas Hofstadter. For example, if you pose a problem involving a person of unknown characteristics, but use the "he" pronoun to mean "he or she", the listener will automatically make unjustified assumptions about the problem.

In language, that's a big phail.

By the way, Shakespeare used the singular "they" ... if that kind of thing matters to you.
 

Silas: "Go describe a new concept to a German and the word given to it. Ask them what gender it should have. If there's less than 90% agreement, you're wrong."

Why pick 90% agreement on something as a test for truth?

90% of Americans believe in some kind of deity, most people believe that there is such a thing as 'market failure', and hundreds of millions think that Rihanna is a great artist. Have you turned into a democrat all of a sudden?

If you think that the only alternative to a fixed algorithm is arbitrariness, I cannot help you. During your stay in Germany, you seem to have picked up one of the less attractive features of the German soul: a desire for binary answers on everything.

Regarding your teacher friends from Franken: I guess their no stopping the rot.

Regarding the use of 'he' or 'she', or its avoidane to limit unwarranted assumptions: it really is too bad that you lack the ablityto express yourself more eleganty. It is very easy to avoid using the gendered pronoun in cases where the gender is either unknown or irrelevant - at least in English.

In German, by the way, the generic term "Person" is feinine, and the pronoun is SIE - rather cute, actually, since the German ear is therefore used to regarding the pronoun 'sie' as both femiine AND neutral. Take that, FeministInnen.....
 

Anonymous:

"The English language is relatively unique as a prominent language which does not assign gender to most nouns."

And poorer for it; though it makes up for this by having many advantages over German or French. Economy of language is one of them.
 

@Anonymous1: Why pick 90% agreement on something as a test for truth?

I wasn't picking it as a test for truth; I was picking it as a test for *consistency* among native speakers, which is what you were claiming. And 90% is favorable to you; I should have said over 99% if you were serious that Germans would all come to the same conclusion based on their culture.

If you think that the only alternative to a fixed algorithm is arbitrariness, I cannot help you.

I was saying that the choice of gender is arbitrary, and that your attempt to explain it by some consistent but indescribable but culturally universal "aesthetic" is wrong.

Re: he/she pronouns: yes, English does have alternate constructions: like using the singular "they". And while I can avoid constructions requiring reference to one person altogether, thereby making it plural, it gets really cumbersome for long passages. Try it yourself!
 

Silas,

Do you always argue by creating strawmen and misrepresenting the argument of others?

You say:

"I wasn't picking it as a test for truth; I was picking it as a test for *consistency* among native speakers, which is what you were claiming."

Learn to read and undertand what you read. I never used the word 'consistent' or 'consistency', or anything resembling them.

What i said was this:
"Picking a gender for a new word is easy, once you understand how gender works."

and

"You want a formula? Sorry, there is none - this is not about formal logic, this is about aesthetics and feelin. All wishy-washy and vague, and yet - astonishingly clear."

How you can infer from this that I was claiming some kind of 'consistency' is beyond me.

Maybe you should learn to argue honestly.
 

Anonymous,

Then it seems to me that the concept of "gender" itself is poorly defined. If something is well-defined, it should keep its meaning through translation. Apparently "feminine" means different things to different peoples - which ultimately means that it doesn't have any precise universal meaning at all.

Now, I'm very willing to buy that which gender you assign to a noun is a matter of aesthetics - but, in that case, it's far less about "gender" as a concept. If it were about "gender", we'd expect the German "Ozean", "Meer", and "See" to all be the same gender, since they refer to remarkably similar things (at least to my American mind). But, they're not assigned the same gender. Conclusion: "gender" in language has little to do with "gender" as a concept. Now, I'm perfectly happy to accept that gender in language is based on aesthetics and conventions... But that hardly provides any ground for declaring that languages (like English) that use it less are "impoverished".
 

Anonymous,

I hate to defend Silas, but, you did say...

"Each language has its own logic, determined by history and culture. It takes a very deepn immersion into the language to understand that (in the philosophical sense of 'Verstehen')."

This seems to suggest that, since native German-speakers are all "deeply immersed" in the language, they should have the same understanding of gender. So, native German-speakers should give you the same answer about a word's gender.

Now, you seem to imply (though you don't say) that "consistency" is NOT something we should expect. (Since Silas is, apparently, being unfair by suggesting that you think it is something we should expect.) If that's the case, then Silas has to be right. Gender assignments are arbitrary.

I can grant that they don't follow "fixed rules" (if gender's meaning isn't something that can actually be expressed precisely). But, they should at least follow trends, if "gender" actually has an intuitive meaning. If they follow no rules and show no trends, then they are arbitrary. Let me know if there's some other category that I'm missing in which gender can be "inconsistent" but also "not arbitrary".
 

Lucas,

Hera er some fixed rules:

All German singular words ending on a consonant+e are feminine, except for natural genders.

All German singular words ending on -er are masculine (though there may be the odd exception)

All German singular words ending on -ung, or -heit are feminine (there are, afaik, no exceptions)

I could go on. Lots of regularities.

Have you ever cooked?
Cooking is arbitrary in so far that there are no fixed rules, but...

Language is like that, too.
 

Thank you, Lucas. It's encouraging that someone else saw the same rhetorical sleight-of-hand that I did and was willing to call someone on it.

Anonymous, if you don't think Germans would assign the same gender (whatever it happens to be) to new nouns on a near-universal basis, due to their culturally-derived Verstehen, then you admit, in contradiction of your previous assertion, that there is no rhyme or reason to the noun genders, and so it's just an arbitrary complication.

But then, that should be obvious from the very fact that "Maedchen" (girl) is a neuter, rather than feminine noun. ;-)

Captcha: endembro ("End 'em, bro."
 

Anonymous: I don't see where your (pathetic, futile) attempt to explain the regularity of German noun gender invokes anything from culturally-derived Verstehen yet, like you claimed it does. Another contradiction?

Uebrigens, wie findest Du die Butter?
 

And yes, I know you said there were exceptions to the "-er --> der" rule, but why don't you want to help eliminate that? For example, I discourage people from saying "an historical" (rather than "a historical") because it violates the otherwise solid, reasonable rule about how to use a/an.

Am I laughed at for this? Am I degrading the language in doing so?
 

Silas,

Maedchen is a dimunitive of Maid (which means more or less the same as the English word maid. Since you claim to speak German, i am surprised to see that you don't know that ALL dimunitives ending in -chen and -lein are neutral. No exception.

Butter is not feminine in all versions of German. The "Schwoben" say der Butter.

As to why not eliminate these irregularities - because nothing enhances beauty more than the occasional disharmony.

Not that this will mean much to you.

Why don't you promote Ido to replace all languages?
 

You ask:

"Am I [to be] laughed at for this? Am I degrading the language in doing so?"

Short answer: yes.
 

Personally, I wouldn't DREAM of getting rid of the completely informative and oh-so-elegant gender assignment. Each time I hear a lowly peasant in Deutschland speak incorrectly, as is progressing much more rapidly, I immediately cut off his head and then draw myself a bubble bath, where I eat caviar and drink a bottle of wine from my vintage collection.

Oh, how I miss the days of when people understood Gorsch Fock. Society is crumbling and she may never recover!

Seriously though, I am intrigued by this discussion- it just so happens that one of you comes off as a snob. In fairness- he shall remain anonymous.
 

Jesse - thanks for the humor. And, yes, I am a snob. Caviar is not very deutsch, though. Banause.

;)
 

@Anonymous: I was aware that nouns with -chen endings are neutral. I'm not aware of the reason why this rule overrides the fact that the noun Maedchen (girl) is an actual, um, female. How does the culturally-derived Verstehen justify this decision? What part of the collective German cultural understanding results in girls being not feminine in the way that butter and newspapers are?

And why do you keep asserting that the alleged regularity is discernable in something OTHER than the Verstehen?

And why do you think you've done any more than rationalize an irrational belief?
 

Anonymous,

The rules you present aren't related to the point I'm making. I agree that, given a word's ending there are rules/trends that can be trusted to be right most of the time (at least in some languages).

The bigger question is, if I show you an object that you've never seen before and ask you to come up with a word for it, is there some set of rules or principles (they might not be something fixed or expressible, that's fine) that determine whether you assign a masculine or a feminine word to it?

What you seem to be arguing is that WORDS have gender, while OBJECTS may not. This seems consistent with "der Ozean, das Meer, and die See". It's not the large body of water that is male, female, or neutral. It's the word that is.

I might be able to grant this in some sense. If I hand a Spaniard a set of letters that I declare to be a word, they will tend to give me the same answer as to whether "el" or "la" should precede the word. So, there are regularities there.

However, that requires a different understanding of pronouns than I'm used to. When I say "Look at the chair. It's pink." The word "it" refers to the object that we call "the chair". It doesn't refer to the WORDS "the chair". However, if I say "Mire la silla. Ella es rosada." (same thing in Spanish), "Ella" is "she". If the chair itself is not feminine, then "ella" must refer back to the WORD "silla", but that understanding of what's going on seems, well, wrong. It's not the WORD that is pink. It's the chair (the object) that is pink.

Why not just acknowledge that the determination of word gender (and, in fact, object gender if we want pronouns to actually signify objects rather than words) is entirely arbitrary, but becomes standardized based on conventional taste?

Which actually, IS much like cooking. But it seems to me that most people acknowledge that cooking is just a matter of taste and convention.
 

Irrational belief - you clearly are not a Misesian. :)
 

Lucas,

Apart from the little quibble about ‘arbitrary’, I fully agree with you. The reason I disagree on arbitrary is that it implies – at least for me – the act of an individual. If you mean to say that there is no ‘objective’ rule then I agree.
I actually never thought of the objects themselves being either male, female, or neutral – I assumed we were talking about the concepts (words) we use to describe them.
 

Silas, you say that “I'm not aware of the reason why this rule overrides the fact that the noun Maedchen (girl) is an actual, um, female.”

As Lucas pointed out, the NOUN is neutral, the Maedchen is not. I see no reason why the fact that a girl is female should be more important than the fact that a dimunitive word in German is neutral. After all, das Kind (the child) is also neutral, even though it can be either male or female. The smallness overrides all consideration of gender.


Oh, and this is not about beliefs, but customs. You really should get your terms straight.
 

"The bigger question is, if I show you an object that you've never seen before and ask you to come up with a word for it, is there some set of rules or principles (they might not be something fixed or expressible, that's fine) that determine whether you assign a masculine or a feminine word to it?"

In German, it's going to be a neutral term "Das Dingsbums". Only if it has an actual name will it be different.
 

Guys, you're missing the whole point!

"Die Scheiße"

Bob's kid was actually wrong...
 

Jesse - I like you :)