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As Someone Learning German, I Know This Pain
(lemmy.tf)
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this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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The example you used involved humans. They were asking about items.
It’s the same. Misgendering any object leads to confusion at best and makes you sound like an utter moron at worst.
Any chance you can help me understand why?
I took German in high school (which was a long time ago) - and yes, I can understand the moron part because if you speak poorly in any language that can happen.
But if I say die bleistift instead of der bleistift, how is that going to confuse someone? Bleistift is still the German word for pencil either way, right? The gendering of inanimate objects always felt very arbitrary to me.
As mentioned in another comment: it shouldn’t be. Youth culture has embraced this in part. However it lacks a certain finesse and makes it difficult for some people to differentiate on whether you wanted to use plural or singular for some people, especially in dialects which tend to omit the ending which would otherwise clarify the gender or singular/plural.
Edit:
Example: „Gibsch ma mal da Bleistift!“ (Singular) „Gibsch ma mal d‘Bleistift!“ (Plural)
Ein Schwabe.
Badner.