Gender trouble

[muckefuck]

Part of the motivation for reading a novel in German, incidentally, it the creeping realisation that my hold on the language is slipping. I mean, I'm still conversational in it and--barring unforeseen tragedy--probably always will be. But some of the more arbitrary bits have been bedeviling me late, chief among them noun gender. Languages are full of patterns, but there are always certain aspects which can only be mastered by brute force memorisation and gobs of reinforcement. And since I've neglected reinforcement, I'm having to resort to force again.

Usually I have the most difficult distinguishing masculines and neuters, because morphologically they're quite similar. (They often form their plurals in the same ways, for instance.) But recently I'm stumbling more over the "stealth feminines", those words with feminine gender that lack one of the characteristic endings such as -ung, -heit, or -e. Angst, for instance, or Gefahr. In fact, I'm considering making my own list for self-study. (Doubtless something like this already exists, but in cases like this the process is often as important as the result.)

Foreign borrowings in particular are a minefield. So it was comforting to come across this excellent website and see that even the Germans themselves can't agree whether it should be das Cola or die Cola (although bizarrely they seem to have settled on das Sofa but die Couch). And that's before we even entertain the question of regional usages. (The Swabians, for instance, insist on dr Sofa, because that's the gender it has in French, whereas for their part the Badener prefer to call it a Chaiselongue.)

Comments

[oh-meow.livejournal.com]

I always get words with almost identical singulars and different plurals mixed up. I have talked about pigeons using hearing aids before, and how I nearly fell in the grave full of mud at the side of the road before.

[oh-meow.livejournal.com]

Sorry, meant to add in "or the same word, but a different article", which includes the pigeon one.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

If that weren't confusing enough, the page I linked to also lists numerous examples where both singular and plural forms are identical, but the gender varies according to the meaning. So when talking about billiards, it's either das Queue or der Queue. But when it comes to computers, it's die Queue. The plural, however, is die Queues regardless.

[oh-meow.livejournal.com]

There's the joys of Sessel/Stuhl too. That's what you get for spending a lot of time in Austria. At least German people think I'm charmingly polite.

[anicca-anicca2.livejournal.com]

Those lexical differences between German and Austrian are a hoot, I remember a Stuhl / Sessel incident, I couldn't fathom why they would want to bring a couple of armchairs when I had asked for some more chairs (for a work setting).
And when eating out I used to order those dishes that I couldn't even guess what they could be, often to find out they were familiar, just under a different name.
Austrians tend to know the German word though, (doesn't work both ways), they indulge us and switch quickly to the expressions we're used to.

[linuxcub.livejournal.com]

"Dr Sofa" ... Wasn't that a song by Sisters of Mercy ?

[anicca-anicca2.livejournal.com]

Die E-Mail, das E-Mail... There are quite a few with more than one version, but people tend to insist the one they use is the only correct one.

(Plus the regional varieties - for my mother it's "die Reis", "der Butter", "der Wurst"... in Saarland it's "der Brezel", afair.. not relevant for Hochdeutsch though, just for the natives to take the piss... )