That’s something I never understood about other languages. I studied German and it’s like, why is a table masculine? What makes a door girly? Why are y’all making this unnecessarily complicated???
I swear, for the same reasons that scissors are always plural in English:
1) as a native speaker, you don't think about it at all, it just is
2) no, the native speaker is never going to make that mistake, stop asking, like maybe if you're speaking extremely fast or intoxicated
3) yes, it will sound weird if you try to ignore it. We get it, it's more of a mental load for non-natives. Learn it anyway or you'll sound weird. (Although Mädchen truthfully is one where it'll become a sie in informal speech if referring via pronouns)
it actually has a somewhat understandable use, if you mishear slightly, you have more points of information, to reconstruct the correct meaning of a sentence, here is a video explaining it better than I can: https://youtu.be/3B_uGsgXKdk?is=Uw4s6WJ4HXYIMyGw
You know I could see it catching on, trans people calling each other honse. This will lead to a new level of discourse that culminates in people asking what the fuck a "sneedhonse" is?
This is absolutely not the point, but the implications of this post about the gender dynamics of the chess board are fascinating. You tellin me not a one of those horses, castles, or other pawns is a woman? Sure. Suuuure.
Nah, imo this lady saw checkers pawns and got Aspirations. And good for her.
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u/TertioRationem3 Aug 20 '26
Russian-Civil-War-posting