Check what's between the legs of the washing machine.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
881 points (97.9% liked)
Memes
13177 readers
2388 users here now
Post memes here.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
- Wait at least 2 months before reposting
- No explicitly political content (about political figures, political events, elections and so on), !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca can be better place for that
- Use NSFW marking accordingly
Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
- Odota ainakin 2 kuukautta ennen meemin postaamista uudelleen
- Ei selkeän poliittista sisältöä (poliitikoista, poliittisista tapahtumista, vaaleista jne) parempi paikka esim. !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
- Merkitse K18-sisältö tarpeen mukaan
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I do not respect gendered languages. I will not apologize for misgendering a pencil. The right form of "the" for an apple is "the apple."
hey, atleast you dont have 14 noun cases.
In French, it's 'le pénis,' but nobody says that. 'Dick,' is feminine (la bite.)
Also, 'vagina' is masculine, but 'pussy' is feminine, because if you were to say 'le chat' it would mean a cat, but by feminising the word, it becomes 'la chatte,' meaning pussy.
As someone who grew up Anglophone, I actually find gendered languages much more precise. On the other hand, in order to make yourself understood one must have a rich vocabulary, because the definitions of words are often more narrow than in English.
And don't even get me started on phrasal verbs... English is messy.
I actually find gendered languages much more precise.
Just never ask a group of Germans what the singular article of Nutella is.
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
One of my languages has three genders for living creatures, and two genders for items. Those genders are all different from each other: humans and other living beings are male/female/living neutral, things are item neutral/item neutral. An item neutral plural is also used for groups of living beings, but not for all groups of items.
One item neutral singular can in some instances be used for a living being regardless of their gender. The other item neutral would be insulting if used about living beings, and especially dehumanising to humans (wish someone had told me this sooner).
I have no idea when to use which item neutral. Locals keep correcting me or almost imperceptibly wincing when I get it wrong, so when I want to sound more fluent I just use the item plural for singulars as well - it seems less annoying for some reason.
Oh, and for one of the item neutrals, if you accidentally use the other item neutral it means the plural of the first one. Kill me now, lol.
Which godforsaken language is that?
All good examples in comments, but in this case it's Swedish. And if not by god then I'll forsake it.
Abyssal I assume.
So Luxembourgish?
You can't just make stuff up.
Which language is that?
Swedish. I have family there so I visit a lot, but I'm not completely fluent.
I've found that most of the time, just pick the most sexist answer you can think of, and you'll typically be right!
I really don't like gendered languages.
You'd love German – there is absolutely zero system or logic behind what word has which of the three genders.
load more comments
(28 replies)
You'll be right 50% of the times. Or 33% in german. And it doesn't match between languages. Like, "cat" is a she in german and a he in french. Often synonyms have different genders : une lettre/un courrier (both mean a mail).
I think the issue is that you are searching your mind for correlations between gender and sexism-related, which is often easier than searching for non-correlation. If I ask you "quick, think of a singer that wears leather", you'll find one instantly. But if I ask "quick, find a singer that doesn't wear leather" it takes a while, even though there more of them.
If you want a better impression of the phenomenon, open a dictionary, go over words one by one and count the points.
And also "organ" (the instrument) in french is male when singular and female when plural. "C'est un bel orgue" and "Ce sont de belles orgues".
- Dick (bite) = Feminine
- Cunt (con) = Masculine
My favorite example for people who think grammatical gender has more than a passing correlation to social gender.
That being said there is actual built-in sexism to grammatical gender in some areas, e.g. job titles (un chauffeur = a driver, une chauffeuse = a prostitute).
"penis" is masculine while "bite" is feminine, too
I would argue that "chauffeuse" for feminine drivers and "chauffeuse" for easy girls should be considered different words, homonyms, likely with separate etymologies. A feminine driver should be called a chauffeuse, and theorically an easy boy could be called a chauffeur. It will not happen because nobody uses the slur this way, but that's unrelated to the grammatical structure of the language. Wouldn't call it built-in.
Words meanings always slide around and we have markers in some of them that determine whether the word describes a man or a women. Since we treat women and men differently, it's not surprising that the feminine variant might end up with different connotations than the masculine one. But the words in question do not have gender, they inherit the gender of who they describe. It's a different thing, unrelated to the assignment of genders to objects
To be clear, I am not defending the idea that you should give gender to things, nor that you should change the suffix in all the words that refer to women. I think it's stupid and I wish we didn't even have pronouns in the first place
Well, that's because chauff-eur/euse means neither driver nor prostitute, but "heater", as in "someone who makes hot". One heats the steam engine, the other their clients. The sexism is not built in the language or the gender system, but in the patriarchal culture.
load more comments
(13 replies)
Mark Twain also struggled with language
To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female—tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and NOT according to the sex of the individual who wears it—for in Germany all the women wear either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.
load more comments
(8 replies)
I asked my Francophone buddy that grew up in backwoods Quebec how the hell he kept it all in his head. He said that he never bothered.
If it had an "e" on the end, he just assumed it was feminine.
If he was drunk, he didn't give a single flying tabernak.
load more comments
(5 replies)
view more: next ›