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The Awful German Language (1880)

(faculty.georgetown.edu)
189 points nalinidash | 2 comments | 16 May 25 04:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.433s | source
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bashkiddie ◴[16 May 25 07:48 UTC] No.44002796[source]▶
Reading the article I guess Mark Twain never had a knowledgeable teacher. Is there anything hacker news readers would like to know about the German language?
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1. lucb1e ◴[16 May 25 21:05 UTC] No.44009822[source]▶
Can I refer to animals as 'them' instead of 'him' or 'her'? Die Katze draußen ist so Süß, ich möchte es unbedingt streicheln. I know that it's not considered correct but to me it feels even wronger to just assume it's a pussycat and not a tomcat. Would people actually mind if I do the more, ehm, to-me-logical thing? Does it take you out of what I'm saying, the way that reading "its you're cat" takes me out of a story?
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2. bashkiddie ◴[17 May 25 07:17 UTC] No.44012602[source]▶
usually not. You need to guess either cat or tomcat, that designates a grammatical sex. All references are based on grammatical sex. It is strongly emphasized that a grammatical sex is not the same thing as a natural sex.

It is ok to guess the sex of an animal wrong. The same way nobody (should) cares whether an infant is a boy or a girl.

You can enforce to be neutral be refering to "das Tier" and "das Kind". But since it is just a grammatical sex, why should anyone bother?

There are some culturally assumed defaults:

* a nurse is assumed to be feminine, unless the distinction is important

* a cat is assumed to be feminine, unless the distinction is important