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Old 29.08.2008, 15:12
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Re: Deciding gender for unknown objects

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I agree as a German: There is no logical rule whatsoever.

There are even differences between Swiss German and high German: Here it is "das Cola" (the coke) while in Germany it is surely "die Cola". Same goes for "das E-Mail" (CH) or "die E-Mail" (D).
To be fair, quite often it is possible to determine by the suffix of the words what gender is should be.

I,.e. endings -ung, -heit, -keit, etc always feminine, as are MOST (not all!) words ending in -e.
The same applied with (if i remember right) -ent, -ant -and and words deriving from Greek (e.g. Architekt, Demokrat usw).

Hope this helps somewhat.
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