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I have often found "DAS" is used For the English words in German. e.g.: das Display, das Pixel, das Hotspot... und so on.

Is this a general rule?

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  • No. Die Band (Rock, Jazz,....). – c.p. Apr 9 '17 at 12:42
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    Hotspot is considered masculine by Duden, so even your examples prove the opposite. – guidot Apr 9 '17 at 12:50
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There is no rule. It all depends on how the foreign word infiltrated German.

When the word is just a snappy English term for a thing which already exists in German, it gets assigned the same gender:

shop ≙ der Laden ⇒ der Shop.

jet ≙ der Düsenjäger ⇒ der Jet. And now all other "jets" are also masculine in German.

airport ≙ der Flughafen ⇒ der Airport.

As the last component of compound words determines the gender in German, generalization leads to more obvious gender assignments:

port ≙ airport ⇒ der Port. And now all ports (network ports etc.) are masculine in German.

fashion ≙ die Mode ⇒ die Fashion.

party ≙ die Feier ⇒ die Party.

rallye ≙ die Wettfahrt ⇒ die Rallye.

sandwich ≙ das belegte Brot ⇒ das Sandwich.

backup ≙ das Sichern ⇒ das Backup.

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  • Warum das Fest? – Carsten S Apr 9 '17 at 16:15
  • @CarstenS: Weil Fest aus dem lateinischen festum importiert worden ist, und das schon dort Neutrum ist. Siehe den Link von tofro oben für weitere Varianten. – dirkt Apr 9 '17 at 17:27
  • Und warum hat Feier und nicht Fest das Geschlecht von Party bestimmt? Und ist ein Sandwich nicht eine Art Stulle (oder Schnitte für die von anderswo ;)? – Carsten S Apr 9 '17 at 17:32
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    Es gibt keine Regel. Wie bereits geschrieben muss man jedem Fremdwort einzeln nachjagen, welches existierende Wort es im Sprachgebrauch ersetzt. Vom dem erbt es dann auch das Geschlecht, denn es soll ja ohne große Umstände einfach einsetzbar sein. – Janka Apr 9 '17 at 17:55
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There is no hard and fast rule. Quite often, if there is a similar word in German, or the word or parts of it can be translated into German, that article is used. That said, sometimes the gender remains unclear for some time, until usually one article wins out by way of public usage. There can even be regional differences (Austrian German has a slight bias towards das, but there certainly isn't any official rule.)

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A general tip is that the article for nouns that derive from foreign languages (as well as nouns deriving from verbs, e.g.) is das.

However there are many exceptions so all these article tips are just useful for when you have to guess without consulting any linguist sources.

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  • There is no such rule that I am aware of. Please cite your sources. – Ingmar Apr 9 '17 at 13:20
  • There's no official rule, yes. Sorry for the confusing choice of word. I've edited, it's more like tip that German beginners use. – Duc Apr 9 '17 at 13:23

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