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Fawkes@lemmy.zip

What is the least enjoyed/most frustrating aspect of learning your target language? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by Fawkes@lemmy.zip to c/LanguageLearning@lemmy.zip

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As an English speaker learning German, I face endless confusion and frustration with many of the short question words that are "False Friends"

Such as:

Wer (where) - Actually means who.

Wo (Who) - Actually means where.

Wie (We) - Actually means how.

Was (was) - Actually means what.

Also (also) - Actually means so.

Will (will) - Actually means to want.

And the completely arbitrary gender assignments!

For example.

The year is: Das Jahr, a neuter word.

The month is: Der Monat, a masculine word.

And the week is: Die Woche, a feminine word.

And then there's directly counter-intuitive examples of words that seem like they Should be a gender other than what they are, such as:

The little girl - Das Mädchen (Neuter, not feminine)

Breasts - Der Busen (Masculine! Boobs is masculine!)

Person - Die Person (Feminine! Why isn't this word neuter?!"

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[–] stray@pawb.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

I personally don't think of them as genders and instead go by what feels right for the individual word. Swedish technically has two grammatical genders, but no one thinks of them that way; there are just en-words and ett-words. So for me "el mar" and "la mer" aren't confusing because the "the" is part of the word, and the word sounds wrong if you change it.