• @Maultasche@lemmy.world
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      59 months ago

      Luckily, for washing machine it’s the same (female) but with others like sun, moon, or table we’re not so lucky. And German having three genders for words and french only two often makes things more complicated.

      • sverit
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        29 months ago

        Seems like both?

        le lave-linge / la machine à laver

        and

        die Waschmaschine

            • Arlaerion
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              39 months ago

              There are some, but many nouns you just have to remember. Diminuitives are neutral, living beings commonly use their biological gender. There are many exeptions, but knowing the origin of them helps (e.g. girl -> das Mädchen is a dimiuitive of maid -> die Maid)

              It helps reading books or watching shows/movies in german to get a feel for the gender of nouns.

            • sparky@lemmy.federate.ccA
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              19 months ago

              Hopefully somebody can give you a better answer, but being a native speaker, I’ve never really thought about it. I can’t say anything comes to me as obviously explaining the genders of different words.

    • @SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
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      29 months ago

      Also German is quite systematic in its naming of things (surprise surprise), so specific names have the same gender as the more ‘generic’ root word for the thing