A Conversation for Ask h2g2
Grammatical Gender
You can call me TC Posted Jul 3, 2002
I was taught (many moons ago) that all imported words take the neuter gender. The example given at the time, (being the most state-of-the-art form of technology) was: "Das Radio".
When I came to live in Germany, I only heard people talking about "der Radio". However, I was told that it was a dialect thing. Now I am fairly dialect-infested and would also tend to use the corresponding article
"Der Tower" because it is "der Turm"
"Das Mountain-Bike" because it is "das Fahrrad"
My colleague who is good at that sort of thing and fluent in English, says that she would say "die Bill" - because ... er she doesn't know why. But that would be more often used for "Bill of Lading" or "Bill of Rights" or "B ill" (die Rechnung, thus fem.)
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Grammatical Gender
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