Timeline for Why is "Baum" masculine?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 11, 2020 at 10:08 | comment | added | Crissov | Kameldung 🆚 Ummeldung, Gerbildung 🆚 Vorbildung, Koaladung 🆚 Beladung, Delfindung 🆚 Erfindung, Fasandung 🆚 Versandung, Ameisendung 🆚 Eilsendung, Löwendung 🆚 Zuwendung, … | |
| Oct 11, 2020 at 1:57 | comment | added | RDBury | @Hagen von Eitzen -- Yes, that shouldn't too hard to figure out though. Hopefully people realize that Meldung comes from melden but Dung does not come from den. | |
| Oct 10, 2020 at 21:49 | comment | added | Hagen von Eitzen | @RDBury As der Dung, der Jung, der Schwung show, once again one needs to be sure that it is really a suffix morphologically, not just a bunch of letters at the end | |
| Oct 10, 2020 at 7:35 | comment | added | Hubert Schölnast | @Jan: Yes, but they learn it as implizit knowledge. Nobody did teach them these rules and they are unable to tell these rules. They just deduce them from what they hear and then they use them. Speaking a language is firstly implicit knowledge. Even if you are told explicit rules, you have to "convert" then into implicit knowledge before you can use them. And this conversion can only be done by using the language. And once you are fluid in a language, you just speak and write without memorizing any explicit rules. At this point you know for each noun separately which gender it has. | |
| Oct 10, 2020 at 1:00 | comment | added | Jan | I am pretty sure that German children learn rules, though informally of course. And then they learn the exceptions. E.g. it is pretty normal for children to learn the "weak" Partizip II first (geschmeckt, gekackt etc) and then mis-apply this to "strong" verbs for a while (to gelaufen, gefahren etc). | |
| Oct 9, 2020 at 20:44 | comment | added | Hubert Schölnast | @ths: The problem is: If you see a word, that is so new to you that you don't know the gender, how do you know if it is a diminutive? Why are »das Kniechen« and »das Kuhchen« diminutives but »der Knochen« and »der Kuchen« are not? What about Mädchen, Märchen, Kaninchen, Frettchen, Schnippchen, Veilchen? They all are diminutives, but from which words (what are the not diminished forms)? | |
| Oct 9, 2020 at 15:58 | comment | added | ths | it't less that words with -chen are neuter, but diminutives, which happen to be formed by the suffix -chen, are. | |
| Oct 9, 2020 at 14:51 | comment | added | Hubert Schölnast | Der Rachen, der Kuchen, der Knochen, der Drachen, die Sachen (plural!), der Dung | |
| Oct 9, 2020 at 7:20 | comment | added | RDBury | The two rules I've found worthwhile are: 1) Certain suffixes determine gender, e.g. -chen nueter, -ung feminine. 2) Compound words have the same gender as the last component, e.g. Zeug is neuter so so are Flugzeug, Spielzeug & Werkzeug. The good news is there are a lot of German nouns formed by suffixes and as compounds, so that lightens the load. The bad news is that Baum isn't one of, so for it and and many others you're better off just memorizing. | |
| Oct 9, 2020 at 6:53 | history | answered | Hubert Schölnast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |