• drathvedro@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 years ago

    Female in Russian, because the word machine/машина ends with A, and so any machine, from tattoo gun to steam engine is female gendered. I always thought French and German worked in somewhat similar manner?

    • IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      2 years ago

      At least for romance languages, there is a rhyme and reason for the gender each noun gets, so neologisms and borrowed words tend to follow the same logic.

      For word morphology, as an example, in Portuguese nouns ending in a are almost always female, so new words that end with a are very likely to be female.

      There are semantic rules too, for example brands and companies are typically (I want to say always but there’s probably edge cases) female, so even though Netflix and Amazon didn’t exist before they’re still female.

      • silly goose meekah@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 years ago

        Sorry you’re being downvoted, I think you’re entirely correct. I hope the other people just don’t realize how jokes that are relativising transphobic experiences like that are downplaying the actual issues trans people are facing.