cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25565846
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this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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I assume a washing machine is female in that case.
All machines are. I'd say it's at least 90% completely arbitrary, what makes streets, tables, power, or cars feminine? What makes some countries feminine and some masculine? The only thing you could believably argue that it's historic sexism is job titles, because most of them are masculine with derived feminine words.
I believe you're wrong to assume the gender is a property of the thing the word refers too, it's a property of the word itself. Synonyms can have different genders, like "vélo" is masculine and "bicylette" is feminine, both mean "bicycle". "Vagin" is masculine. There's no 100% consistent mean to determine a words gender, but helpful patterns that are right most of the time would be more in the word's ending.
To take the example of "machine", I can't think of any word ending in "-ine" that isn't feminine, safe for some Russian names.
Also, if a noun doesn't end in "-e", it's most likely masculine. But the reciprocal isn't true!
What ? All machines are female?
Une machine à laver ok, but un lave linge, un lave vaisselle, un sèche linge, un robot de cuisine, un four...
Hell I can think of more "males" than "females" machines.
All "machine à [...]" are female.
Yes because the word machine is female.
I don't speak French but I may integrate this into my daily vocabulary.