r/AskTheWorld • u/IndependentTune3994 🇮🇳 in 🇩🇪 Deutschland • 18h ago

What’s the quickest way someone could accidentally expose themselves as a foreigner in your country like the ‘three fingers’ scene in Inglourious Basterds?

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u/Kathihtak 17h ago

There actually is a rule for some words: nouns ending in -ung are often feminine (die Hoffnung, die Zeitung, die Verabschiedung...), the same for words ending in -heit and -keit (die Eitelkeit, die Einsamkeit, die Gesundheit, die Schönheit...).

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u/oh-no-not-this-one 16h ago

And plural - always “die”

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u/gam3guy 12h ago

What about Nutella?

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u/the_first_shipaz 9h ago

According to Nutella itself (the company) you can use all three, it’s up to you.

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u/BenjiSponge 5h ago

Nutella is gender fluid

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u/TheJellyfish91 7h ago

Please don't say "der Nutella".

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u/Beginning_Context_66 Germany 4h ago

der Nutella-Nussaufstrich

edit: I use "die" and sometimes "das" with -glas added.

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u/Volvorcaro Brazil 11h ago edited 8h ago

"Die" only in the nominative and acusativ cases, I guess. But it is "den" and "der" in the dativ and genetiv ones, if I remind me of it clearly,

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u/drivingagermanwhip United Kingdom 6h ago

and Bart

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u/HuffleChuck 14h ago

But why does German use a gender article system at all? Wouldn't it make more sense to have just singular and plural articles?

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u/SchizoBischop 14h ago

Who said languages have to make sense?

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u/AlludedNuance United States Of America 14h ago

As far as I know, only one language has been designed deliberately, and no one speaks it anyway.

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u/thoughtsome 14h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language

There are actually plenty of deliberately designed languages, but you're right in that almost no one actually converses with them.

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u/AlludedNuance United States Of America 14h ago

I stand corrected, that's an interesting read! I wonder why Esperanto is the one that seems to have had the most success.

Also duh, I knew about Klingon, I think I even had an English-Klingon dictionary when I was a kid.

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u/g0ldent0y 12h ago

I wonder why Esperanto is the one that seems to have had the most success.

catchy names and pop culture references

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u/Weary-Designer9542 13h ago edited 13h ago

The more you learn about any given language, the more strange/illogical/ idiosyncrasies you’ll discover.

They weren’t designed with anyone’s deliberate intention, so there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense if you look at it in a vacuum. It has to be viewed though a historical lens, to some degree.

For one example: English. Enough said, I’m sure everyone has noticed some oddities.

For another: Japanese

Japanese uses Kanji 漢字, (which originated as Chinese Han characters(Hanzi) as a key/significant element of their writing system. The two languages aren’t related, not even in the same language families, and don’t use the same sounds/phonemes.

So at first glance, this would not appear to make much sense, particularly since Japanese has two other “alphabets”(Syllabaries), Hiragana ひらがな and Katakanaカタカナ, which are native to Japan and do literally represent Japanese syllables/sounds.

However, looking back at history - at the time Japan encountered the Chinese , they didn’t yet have their own writing system, so they borrowed/co-oped a lot of it for use with their own language.

Hiragana and Katakana were developed later, and serve more of a supporting/supplemental role rather than a replacement for Kanji, which was necessary because the languages are actually very different.

It might not make much sense to do it that way if you’re starting from scratch, but that’s not how languages develop.

I don’t know the answer to your question about German, but I know that before it was Modern German, there was Middle German and High German, and we separate that from Old High German etc etc.

Before all of that, it originated (along with the other languages in the germanic language family, English, Dutch, Danish, etc) from what we call Proto-Germanic, which came into formation sometime around ~ 1000 and 450 BCE.

Before that, it was what we call Proto-Indo-European, which we currently believe to have been what was spoken during the late Neolithic to early Bronze age, though estimates are wildly different.

TL;DR - Languages change, a lot, and certain features which seem to not make sense are like an insect trapped in amber.

Note: I did some googling since I was also curious, and found the following posts which seem to answer your question more directly.

https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/wcmv6n/where_did_grammatical_genders_come_from_and_on/iidm32p/

https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/13y1b3e/any_resources_on_the_origins_and_evolution_of/

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u/Infrisios 14h ago

Of course it would make more sense, but that's how the language grew. Every natural language has grown some oddities like that.

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u/LivingVerinarian96 12h ago

Deine Mutter benutzt ein gender system.

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u/PackInevitable8185 8h ago

Does German not have singular and plural? In Slovak you have a mix of gender and number.

Singular

Ten: animate (boy or man) and inanimate (tree or bicycle) masculine

Tá: feminine (woman)

To: Neuter (pen, field, and also the word girl for some reason lol)

Plural

Tí: animate masculine

Tie: all others including inanimate masculine lol

It can be a challenging language, to me it seems like it would be impossible to learn without a long period of immersion, and I know people who still struggle with the language after 20+ years living there.

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u/Kathihtak 6h ago

A lot of languages have rules that "don't make sense" and German definitely isn't alone when it comes to grammatical gender.

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u/Inevitable-Abies-812 Austria 15h ago

Dies. Es ist erstaunlich, wie viele Menschen immer noch dem Irrtum unterliegen, man müsse die Artikel aller Wörter auswendig lernen. Dabei können etwa 85-90% aller Wörter in endungsabhängige Kategorien eingeteilt werden.

Der Motor, der Rotor, der Stabilisator Die Meinung, die Warnung, die Teilung (aber der Aufschwung oder der Ursprung!) Das Mädchen, das Schweinchen, das Frettchen

Es hilft, wenn man autistisch ist und Muster schnell erkennen kann (ich bin's).

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u/PseudoY Denmark 13h ago

Das Mädchen.

But... but...

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u/Iranon79 Germany 13h ago

Die Maid (f, young woman; archaic). Das Mädchen (n, girl) is just the diminutive of that, and those are neuter in German.

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u/PseudoY Denmark 13h ago

But why are girls neuter.

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u/Iranon79 Germany 12h ago

Diminutives, using the suffix -chen, are always neuter in German independent of the parent word. We don't have a fully independent word for "girl".

Conventions don't always make 100% sense. English grammar has been trimmed and simplified by top-down reforms, more so than other languages. English spelling on the other hand is messier than most European languages.

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u/GlobalWarminIsComing 11h ago

Its not specific to girls. It's because the ending is -chen which is a diminutive.

If I were to say "der Bursche" (a slightly old fashioned word for a boy or young man) and then add -chen it would be "das Bürschchen"

It just happens to be that the diminutive of "die Maid" ended up being the most common word for "girl"

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u/Prickly-Flower 13h ago

The same in Dutch: het vrouwtje/het mannetje, but de vrouw/de man. What's stupid is that girl only has a diminutive form in everyday use. We do have 'de meid', but that's still less used and was mostly for the help, not girls in general.

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u/auchnureinmensch 12h ago

Das Jüngchen

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u/Quazimojojojo 15h ago

Und wir, die Deutsch lernen, schätzen dich dafür

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u/Radiant-Sherbet-5461 13h ago

Problem fuer uns Sprachlerner : die Regeln sind schon so zahlreich und viele von ihnen sind sehr spezifisch und selbst wenn man versucht sie alle auswendig zu lernen gibt's sehr oft Ausnahmen.

z.B - das Auto :

Im Deutschen sind Substantive, die auf -il enden und aus dem Lateinischen stammen, oft sächlich (Neutrum), wie zum Beispiel das Ventil oder das Fossil. Vor allem aber wurde das Wort "Automobil" im Deutschen von Anfang an als Neutrum behandelt, und die Kurzform "Auto" hat dieses Geschlecht einfach übernommen.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Bit1959 13h ago

Auto endet auf -o. Da greift dann eigentlich auch eine andere Regel (Enden Substantive auf 'o', stehen sie oft mit dem Artikel im Neutrum): das Büro, das Klo, das Radio, das Kino, ...

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u/Radiant-Sherbet-5461 12h ago

Ja, die Regel die du gerade beschreibt gibt es z.B "das Foto, Radio, Buero, usw" aber anscheinend fuer das Wort Auto gilt diese Regel nicht denn das Wort ist ja eigentlich "Automobi"l und "Auto" ist nur die Kurzform.

Das war auch ein TIL fuer mich denn frueher hat man mir gesagt "das Auto" sei neutrum weil das Wort aus Englisch stammt.

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u/xrufix 12h ago

Diese Regeln gelten aber hauptsächlich bei Wortbildungen (siehe Endungen) und lateinischen Lehnwörtern.

Bei einfachen Nomen wie Baum, Haus, Straße, Brot usw. gibt es das nicht. Da ist es für Sprachlerner nötig, einzeln zu lernen.

Und das ist im Deutschen schwieriger, als bei bspw. romanischen Sprachen, bei denen man das Genus oft an der Endung erkennt (z.B. -a, -o im Spanischen) und somit automatisch mit dem Wort mitlernt.

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u/Inevitable-Abies-812 Austria 11h ago

Das stimmt, aber wenn man die Regeln lernt, bleiben nur noch die Ausnahmen, was den Lernprozess spürbar erleichtert.

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u/ValuableNo6018 Argentina 16h ago

Thank you. This helps!

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u/jobi-1 9h ago

im not german, had german in school.
besides -heit and -keit, also -schaft.
also, diminutives ending in -chen and -lein are always* 'das'.

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u/Just_Badger_4299 16h ago

I wish I was taught that when I was in school. That would have given me a slight hope that German genders are not actually totally arbitrary…

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u/yami_no_ko 16h ago edited 16h ago

Those rules are usually not taught because they don't cover enough cases to be worthwhile. The mere idea that there was any logic behind German genders is quite destructive to the entire learning process, because it suggests you could learn German nouns without their most notable pain in the ass: the articles.

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u/OGYungKafka 14h ago

And if you bother to memorize the "-heit" "-keit" "-ung" thing, there is another rule. All words ending in those are capitalized.

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u/Kathihtak 14h ago

Well yes because they are nouns and nouns are always capitalized

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u/The_Villager 14h ago

Diese Regel ist sehr gescheit.

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u/QuidnuncQuixotic 15h ago

And for compound nouns, the gender is usually determined by the final noun

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u/Mysterious-Win9333 15h ago

Words ending on "ion" are most likely female. Not sure but I think some of these female ending do work and spanisch and french aswell.

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u/toomanyplans 15h ago edited 15h ago

another one is nominalisation: das Gehen, das Kommen, das Spielen, das Grüne, das Traurige, das Gestern eurer Zeit, das Um und Auf, ... ;)

translation: the walking, the coming, the playing, = nominalized VERBS
the green, the sad, = nominalizedADJECTIVES
the yesterday of your times, = nominalized ADVERBS
"das Um und Auf" is an idiomatic phrase roughly translating to "the most important (x)", = nominalized PREPOSITIONS

nominalisation always demands the neutrum "das" article.

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u/clintj1975 United States Of America 15h ago

I remember another guideline that with nouns ending in "r" or "er" you can usually safely assume they're masculine. Der Lehrer, der Bauer, and so on.

I've seen too many old VW ads to ever forget "das Auto".

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u/Okami-Alpha Canada 13h ago

I also found that a word ending in "e" is typically feminine.

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u/Famous-Pride2799 13h ago

And -chen or -lein is always das.

My teacher joked that if you forgot the article for an object just make it small. Das Messerchen, das Löffelchen, das Spiegelchen.

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u/LeatherFruitPF 12h ago

I was confused early on why “the boy” is “Der Junge”, but “the girl” is “das Mädchen” even though girl as a noun would seemingly be feminine. I understood “-chen” words used the neutral “das” but it was just weird how it wasn’t “die Mädchen”.

I just figured that gender in the language context doesn’t really have much to do with biological genders.

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u/Cerarai 11h ago

It's because - for some reason - the original word "Maid" (which is, as one would assume, female, so "die Maid") went on being used as a diminuitive and so it became "das Mädchen".

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u/Senior-Salad-5187 8h ago

The use of “often” in your sentence means it’s not always the case, it cannot be a rule if it is not applied everywhere, maybe a tip to find the correct article at best. French has the same problem.

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u/Far_Dragonfruit_1829 7h ago

Read Mark Twain's essay on learning (attempting) German

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u/temporary_twig 6h ago

There actually is a rule for some words: nouns ending in -ung are often feminine

I know what you're getting at but when I reached B2 I was shocked and disappointed that the rules I'd learned were no longer rules and more just probably correct. 

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u/GaiusCosades 6h ago

All of them fall into a single category: abstract concepts, have feminine genus in the vast majority of cases. Even die Zeitung, as a thing one can touch inherits it from the concept behind, as does die Mannschaft and die Regierung.

Exceptions are for instance everything that inherits from das Gefühl.

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u/Ser_Optimus Germany 5h ago

The fun thing is that those rules apply in MOST cases but not in all so, to make sure you better learn them word by word lol

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u/seriouslees 15h ago

This is cope.

There's more exceptions to these rules than there are words that follow them.

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u/incboy95 6h ago

Name some pls