Swiss-German language is gender-confused.

I was trying hard to come up with an example put failed. Thanks!


Das DVD-Abspielgerät?

well that depends what you define as " fremdwörter"

anyhow I only got in on this thread because the header looked like another Mike Shiva discussion.

I refer to the earlier post and give up :-)


It's all got far to literal here

Actually you could speak Swiss German and just use one gender and get away with it - you'd sound retarded, but people would understand it

Sorry, but you are simply wrong on this one. It does not matter "how foreign" a word is or which language it comes from: Die Al-Quaeda, der Taifun, der Man-kini (ok, I took this from another discussion)... die Speedo (? Not entirely sure on that one, I never needed to think about it)...
German speakers simply "feel" what a new word should be. As Swiss speakers use mainly their dialect, they feel occasionally differently. Just as Stephan said, here it is "es Coki" and therefore "das Cola".

I'm not arguing about how it is but rather how it should be.

Käse is actually masculine (der, not das).

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So en Chäs

That's correct. Words that end with chen which represents "little" are mostly neutral, like Mädchen, Bällchen,Brötchen

also what i've learnt is that most words that ends with "ang" are masuline.

der Anhang
der Anfang
der Ausgang
der Vorhang
der Untergang

this is great. on words that have the femine form

Das stimmt! der Käse.
So 'n Mist.

Thanks Texaner

Hahaha, that's why it's called "der Nissen" and "das Stockhorn", isn't it?

Being a rule-ridden German I have to correct you on that one:
The gender of some words is regional even within Germany. The Northern German form would be e.g. die Cola, die Butter, das Gummi, whereas for some unknown reason Southern Germans (and the Swiss) prefer das Cola, der Butter and der Gummi... not to mention the difference in vocabulary in general, where Berliner are Pfannkuchen in East Germany and Pfannkuchen are referred to as Eierkuchen!

Thats a good one, especially since I would call it "der Gummi" but "die Cola"... but I am from the middle of Germany, so I guess I can choose it they way I prefer. So much about the rule-crazy Germans

All you expats: Stick to the Duden! The bald man mentioned before is always right.

Ah, there's the rub you see - which version of Duden should we follow, do I spell "Schifffahrt" with 3 "F"'s or only 2? What about "Teeeier"? Are 3 "e"'s in a row allowed? That bald bloke must be very busy with all that to worry about

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