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ANeves
ANeves
12:02 PM
@Gilles, and @PythonMaster, but I don't want *rules* to know which the gender is.
(One such would be «most words ending in -e are feminine».)
I want *techniques* to help me memorize the gender when a rule does not help.
(One such technique would be to memorize in my native language when the genders match and in English when they don't: die banane(f) = a banana (f); but der Mond (m) = the moon, because in my native language the moon is masculine.)
 
Gilles
Gilles
12:20 PM
@ANeves which is what makes it a Language Learning question more than a German Language question
you won't find techniques that work for all languages (or at least, if you insist on techniques that work for all languages, you'll miss most of them)
by the way, the “-e endings are feminine” rule doesn't really work for French, it's technically true but only a 2:1 ratio, and that's including word pairs that have a male/female variant such as professions and animal names
the technique “memorize the article” is what I was taught for German, and it also works for French, but it doesn't work in languages without gendered articles
and even in French and German, you have to pick different articles: for French you should pick the indefinite article because the definite article is gender-neutral before a vowel (l'), for German you should pick the definite article because the masculine and neutral indefinite articles are identical
 
ANeves
ANeves
12:36 PM
I meant «most German words ending in -e are feminine». My bad.
Hmm... I somehow forgot the obvious "memorize the substantive with an article". thanks @Gilles
 
ANeves
ANeves
12:52 PM
ugh, CAPTCHA is not working
So scary, ended up refreshing the page and then it did.
I was afraid I had lost my question. :(
Thanks for the help.
@Gilles, would you add your «learn the substantives with the articles», if you agree that the question belongs?
 
Gilles
Gilles
1:51 PM
@ANeves I did include it as part of my answer for French, and it would belong in an answer for German too
 
ANeves
ANeves
yiss
 
 
2 hours later…
ANeves
ANeves
4:12 PM
@Flimzy you can make it work, with liberal use of metaphors.
"freezing integrity" could be visualized as "the ruler had the integrity of an Ice Queen".
"exploding anguish"... hmm... could be imagined as someone so anguished that their personalities are about to crack.
"slow anguish" would be easy.
In any case, @Flimzy, the visual mnemonics is a really powerful and appropriate approach for me, thx! <3
 

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