Re:The capital sharp S in now part of the official German or...
by tom_mellior on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @07:01AM
(#14695052)
> how are new genders decided?
Many new nouns are nouned forms of verbs. In German there are a bunch of fixed suffixes for turning verbs into nouns, and they have their own fixed genders: "-er" (masculine), "-ion", "-ung", "-age" (feminine), "-en" (neutral).
For other words, speakers, over time, sort of converge on a consensus, which may only be regional. For example, in some regions "Cola" (the drink) is "die Cola" (female), in others it's "das Cola" (neutral).
Others... not sure. "Mobile phone" is "das Handy" (neutral), I guess from "das Telefon". I'm fairly sure "das Internet" came by analogy from "das Netz", which is the German word for "net".
Many new nouns are nouned forms of verbs. In German there are a bunch of fixed suffixes for turning verbs into nouns, and they have their own fixed genders: "-er" (masculine), "-ion", "-ung", "-age" (feminine), "-en" (neutral).
For other words, speakers, over time, sort of converge on a consensus, which may only be regional. For example, in some regions "Cola" (the drink) is "die Cola" (female), in others it's "das Cola" (neutral).
Others... not sure. "Mobile phone" is "das Handy" (neutral), I guess from "das Telefon". I'm fairly sure "das Internet" came by analogy from "das Netz", which is the German word for "net".