this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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Microblog Memes

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A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Child - das Kind - grammatical gender: neuter. Referred to in context using the gender-neutral pronoun 'es' (it). The pronoun used correlates with the grammatical gender of the noun used, not the gender of the person referred to.

Eg Ein Kind lacht. Es hat etwas gesehen. (transl: A child laughs. He/she/they saw something.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I know. But generally, the gender of the noun describing a person correlates with the gender of the person described strongly.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

Ok but my point is that when it doesn't correlate, it becomes clear how grammatical gender is independent from the person's gender.

It becomes even clearer when you consider all nouns by definition have a grammatical gender - inanimate objects, abstract concepts, etc, even though the thing described clearly doesn't have a gender. Eg die Tür ist offen. Ich schliesse sie. (transl.: the door is open. I close it.) 'Sie' being the female pronoun used to refer to the grammatically female door.