There’s definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.

  • fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    27 days ago

    In arabic we don’t even have neuter or non-gendered anythings, a table is a he or she.

    Not even objects are safe 😔

    • rbn@sopuli.xyz
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      27 days ago

      In German it feels completely random.

      A table is masculine. A castle is feminine. A sausage is feminine. A boy is masculine. A girl is neutral. A fire is neutral. …

      Not sure if there’s any meaningful rule behind.

      • robador51@lemmy.ml
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        27 days ago

        Actually, Mädchen (meaning “girl” in German) is a diminutive. It comes from Magd (an old word for “maid” or “young woman”) with the -chen suffix, which is a common diminutive in German.

        The -chen suffix makes words grammatically neuter, which is why Mädchen takes das instead of die, even though it refers to a female person.

        I’m not German but the same applies to the Dutch word for girl, and we’ve the same rule for neutral. By the way, ‘magd’ in Dutch means virgin (maagd to be precise), which sounds incredibly inappropriate to be going around calling someone; little virgin (/¯ ಠ_ಠ)/¯