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.
Yeah as an English speaker using neuter seems very natural. Modern English loan words such as from IT are often neuter for that reason.
However in general, words are statistically most likely to be masculine and least likely to be neuter. So if the word ending isn’t obviously feminine and it’s not a category such as IT that has a common gender you may be better off guessing masculine.
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.
My understanding was that it’s not seen as a male or female like it would be in English. Like der Tisch, they aren’t thinking of the table being manly, it’s just the way it’s said. Also neuter is seen more like a child gender than nonbinary. 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.
Would love to know more if anyone has any experience with that. I could be wrong as I am still learning and don’t know about gender theory in German. Are there gender politics for objects in German?
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?
Yes they do match up where if you are talking about a female animal or person it’s a feminine word etc. For inanimate objects I’ve been told they aren’t necessarily giving or thinking of them as having a gender though, not like it would be in English.
There seems to be no standard way to address someone nonbinary, it’s even worse than in English. Best I know is to ask. Until then most simply skip the pronoun and use their name instead, or Sie. Since Sie is respectful and is already used for people of any gender when used formally.
The nonbinary category itself is often called “divers”. Nouns that reference gender can be combined by adding an asterisk in the middle. “Lehrer*in”. As a warning though some conservative and older people can get upset about the asterisk.
Do you know what level German you are at? My older relatives spoke German but passed away when I was young. I always regretted not learning it and being monolingual. So in my 30’s I decided I was just going to learn it even if it took years or I never fully got genders right. Now it’s been 15 months learning daily and am at the B1 level. So not an expert just intermediate with more to learn.
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.
Now it’s been 15 months learning daily and am at the B1 level. So not an expert just intermediate with more to learn.
Good for you. I feel like the hardest part of German (as a non-native speaker) is regularly practicing.
in my Spanish (HS) class if I don’t know I just guess based off of the vibes
I’ve guessed correctly more often than not
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.
Yeah as an English speaker using neuter seems very natural. Modern English loan words such as from IT are often neuter for that reason.
However in general, words are statistically most likely to be masculine and least likely to be neuter. So if the word ending isn’t obviously feminine and it’s not a category such as IT that has a common gender you may be better off guessing masculine.
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.
My understanding was that it’s not seen as a male or female like it would be in English. Like der Tisch, they aren’t thinking of the table being manly, it’s just the way it’s said. Also neuter is seen more like a child gender than nonbinary. 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.
Would love to know more if anyone has any experience with that. I could be wrong as I am still learning and don’t know about gender theory in German. Are there gender politics for objects in German?
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 haven’t heard anything about that but that’s really interesting. Do you know how they prefer to be addressed?
Yes they do match up where if you are talking about a female animal or person it’s a feminine word etc. For inanimate objects I’ve been told they aren’t necessarily giving or thinking of them as having a gender though, not like it would be in English.
There seems to be no standard way to address someone nonbinary, it’s even worse than in English. Best I know is to ask. Until then most simply skip the pronoun and use their name instead, or Sie. Since Sie is respectful and is already used for people of any gender when used formally.
The nonbinary category itself is often called “divers”. Nouns that reference gender can be combined by adding an asterisk in the middle. “Lehrer*in”. As a warning though some conservative and older people can get upset about the asterisk.
Do you know what level German you are at? My older relatives spoke German but passed away when I was young. I always regretted not learning it and being monolingual. So in my 30’s I decided I was just going to learn it even if it took years or I never fully got genders right. Now it’s been 15 months learning daily and am at the B1 level. So not an expert just intermediate with more to learn.
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.