Microblog Memes

Yeah, I should have been more clear. It can be learned, with a good basis of language instruction and ongoing effort. It’s relatively easy to communicate effectively without mastering word gender, so for people who don’t care about correctness, people who learned exclusively on their own, or people who don’t delve into the theory of German grammar much, it’s also very possible to otherwise master German without a good understanding of genders. (Given the actual history of migration in Germany, the vast majority of people who have been here 30+ years were unfortunately not given a good basis of instruction, but that’s very slowly changing.)

My intent in saying that it can be learned is not to shame anyone who hasn’t internalized the patterns of genus (the point of learning a language is communication, after all, and most communication is not hampered by incorrect gender usage), but rather to note that they’re not actually random. I was always taught that the gender of a word is random unless it ends in -heit, -keit, -tion, -ung, -tät, -schaft, or -chen, but that’s just not the case. There are exceptions, but general rules do exist (materials are generally neutral, single syllable words that gain an umlaut when pluralized are generally masculine, emotions are generally feminine, but types of anger are typically masculine, etc.).

I read a fascinating book about this, that I’ll try to find when I get home, because it completely changed my view of genus. It explicated a lot of the rules that native speakers and nonnative speakers with a highly developed (oof at that word, but I can’t think of a better one) language sense have internalized.