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Comment by donjoe | Hacker News Reader

Well, sometimes Germans themselves are not quite sure about which article to use. It differs from north to south, from east to west and depends a lot on the dialect you're used to.

An (Upper-)Bavarian would for example never say "die Butter". It is and will always be "der Butter". Same with "der Radio" in the South and "das Radio" for the rest of the country.

Another funny thing I stumble upon every time Oktoberfest starts: Oktoberfest in Munich is referred to as "die Wiesn" (the lawn/grassland). Bavarians don't know an 'e' in the end of a noun, they will therefore always replace it with a 'n'. In the rest of Germany, Wiesn doesn't exist. It's either 'Wiese'(sgl, a single grassland) or 'Wiesen' (pl, many grasslands). Since Wiesen sounds more similar to 'Wiesn' than 'Wiese', even newspapers regularly refer to the Oktoberfest as a multiple of 'Wiese' which - for us - sounds just wrong: "Heute sind wir auf den Wiesn gewesen".

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It gets worse with new words. Sometimes, there's a "correct" way of deriving the article I guess, but it sounds weird.

For example Blog. Correct would be "das Blog" (because "das Web-Log" = "das Logbuch" or "das Protokoll"), but "der Blog" sounds nicer imho. Some people say "das Laptop" although this sounds off for most and "der Laptop" is correct.

For other words, the article can change over time. Correct is "das Virus", because it's a Latin word and the ending -us comes with "das". But most people say (and the media writes) "der Virus".

> Sometimes, there's a "correct" way of deriving the article I guess, but it sounds weird.

No. If something sounds right to a native speaker, it's correct.

It’s even more complicated, as even Bavarians use the articles by context, using the proper one when speaking standard German and the variation when using dialect. Alas, not everyone has the same level of dialect, especially in Munich, so you can hear both even when Bavarian is in use.

As for the plurals, the -e suffix can often both be left out and replaced with an n, so you have two singular forms for some words.

But again, without the dialect it won’t work. As the GP said, you’ll still be understood, though. As with most languages, a lot of parts are superfluous and can be determined by context.

I have asked multiple germans about gendered nouns and other funky grammar points. I often end up getting different answers or confusion when I relate what I learnt from a reliable source elsewhere. Honestly, despite the confusion, I love how diverse the German language is despite the relatively small range and number of speakers, but also considering it came under many of the same forces for "flattening" the rules as English did.

Being a native speaker does not imply knowing the rules.

From my experience you don't learn the grammar of your mother language the way you learn it when learning a language later. This appears to be universal. You just do what feels right and it works out but you can't cite the rule that applies.

It really isn’t as diverse as you seem to think. As suggested in another comment, these German speakers you talked to simply didn’t know the correct forms: The German language is generally quite prescriptive, there’s little room for variation outside dialects (which are not “correct/standard German”).

(And then there are Platt (= Low German) and Alemannisch/Schwyzerdütsch, both of which are distinct languages from High German.)

> It really isn’t as diverse as you seem to think. As suggested in another comment, these German speakers you talked to simply didn’t know the correct forms: The German language is generally quite prescriptive, there’s little room for variation outside dialects (which are not “correct/standard German”).

Nonsense. If a native speaker uses a form and thinks it's correct, it by definition is.

I have a weak spot with articles, i, a native speaker, have to think for long about "teller" is it "der Teller" or "das Teller". One is my local dialect the other standard German. I know which one to use by imagining how my old neighbor would talk.

Another gem is that in my local dialect the word for foot (Fuß) has an extended meaning and denotes the body part of foot and leg. There basically is not a separate word for leg (well there is but it's standard German not dialect). The standard German word for leg is "bein". Now Bein has a common ancestor with a similar word in English "bone", and indeed the dialectal version of Bein in my dialect is the word for bone. (To me that indicates that the word has made a meaning change in standard German).

Now if I don't think hard (or if I am tired) I will call my leg "foot" in English, which confuses everyone.

There is also the German word "Gebein" which is the literal translation for bone and probably the origin of the dialect "Bein" you use.

I think I looked it up in an etymological dictionary and the dialectal form is archaic, I.e standard German uses a "mutated" version of the word.

Probably in German both meanings were used alongside for a while and then folks started to attach a "ge-" in front of one meaning to avoid confusion.

I think this is misleading: Dialects exist but they don’t change the rules of standard German grammar. In German, only “die Butter” is correct, regardless of where you are. Upper Bavarians may use “der Butter” but there’s an understanding that this is dialect, and not correct German. It’s fine in daily usage but not in more formal speech or in writing.

(A better example is “Mus”, which has multiple correct genders.)

German is a lot more prescriptive than English. This is only different for neologisms and anglicisms (“Newsletter”), where a generally accepted gender hasn’t been established through usage yet (Duden now lists “Newsletter” as masculine, but both “die Newsletter” and “das Newsletter” were common until recently).

It depends on the word. Der oder das Radio for example: das Radio(gerät) oder der Radio(empfänger) defines the article. The same can be distinguished for butter: the word's origin might originate from Greek or Latin - depending on which language you choose, you'd get a different article.

That’s not true. Only “das Radio” is correct Standard German. Only “die Butter” is correct Standard German. Other forms may well be common, and accepted as dialect. But they’re not Standard German, which means they’re not taught in school (except by mistake), and are not acceptable in official communications. You may not like that German is so overly prescriptivist (I have issues with it) but it’s a simple fact.

Additionally, your explanation about the origin of the gender of “Butter” is entirely apocryphal: the original Greek/Latin gender has at best an indirect influence on the gender of the modern German word (and in fact both were neuter: βούτυρον vs butyrum).

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