If English had masculine and feminine nouns for things ....

.... what otherwise neuter nouns would take a gender?

Ships and countries are otherwise-neuter nouns that at one time were "she" in English.

In virtually every other Indo-European language, the noun for "hand" is feminine for some reason.

Would we continue to use "the" as a neutral article or would we instead use "ther," "thie,""thas?"

 

English is difficult enough for non-native speakers. Kidding. Sort of. I've been learning German since the plague, so this is something that one thinks about during the adjustment period when it comes to possessive pronouns and -in stems.

 

der Mann, die Frau, das Madchen. Why are girls gender neutral? Sounds like an issue for Make America German Again movement.

 

i noticed that, too. One of the apps I used for a while included Madchen. Duolingo does not. There's Sohn, Tochter, and Junge, but no Madchen.

Kitteridge Cherry's Womansword is a fun examination of sexism in the Japanese language. After my second copy walked away, I didn't replace it, but I do recommend it.

 

Plurals, for the most part, get switched to die. It's der Mann but die Manner (the men). And we're a nation of feminine articles (die USA), because the United States are plural.

And don't get me started on umlauts.

 

According to my high school German teacher, "Au" means water/meadow/stream, so my last name translates to "man of the swamp," which is somewhat appropriate for someone who lived in Florida four times.

On the other hand, my best friend from middle school was named Weissenberger, which translates to "man of the white mountains." Way cooler. Especially since his family was from Austria.

My best friend in high school was named Schick, which means "skillful." Or a brand of razors.

 

The Russian word for "man" (мужчина) has a feminine ending and gets declined like a feminine noun. But it takes masculine adjectives and masculine demonstrative pronouns. Trips me up all the time when I have to combine the two (or three).