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submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago

| French | English | |


|


| | du | of the | | de l' | of the | | de la | of the | | des | of the | | au | to the / at the | | à l' | to the / at the | | à la | to the / at the | | aux | to the / at the |

French has multiple options because it has 2 genders for nouns "the chair" = "la chaise" (female), "the bench" = "le banc" (male), and it changes the article when you're talking about multiple things vs. single things "the benches" = "les bancs".

So, French really has 3 versions of "the": "le" (male, singular), "la" (female, singular), "les" (female or male, singular).

But German... ugh. There's a 4x4 matrix of German words for "the". German had the wisdom to come up with a neuter gender, but the insanity to not apply it to most common objects. Somehow a knife is sexless, a spoon is male and a fork is female. Making it worse, the version of "the" you use for an object depends on whether the object is the subject of a sentence, the object of a sentence, the indirect object of a sentence or possessive. I don't know if it's better or worse (but I'm leaning towards worse) that they re-use a lot of these articles at other spots in the matrix, so "der" is used for male objects in the nominative case, female in the dative case, and plural objects in the genitive case.

| Case | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Plural | |


|


|


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| | nominative | der | die | das | die | | accusative | den | die | das | die | | dative | dem | der | dem | den | | genitive | des | der | des | der |

Take "Stein" which is stone, not beer glass. If you're an English speaker and are used to adding an "s" to make something plural, and you see "Der Stein" and "Des Steines", you might think that the version with the "es" is the plural, right? Nope, the plural of "Der Stein" is "Die Steine". "Des Steins" is for the possessive case. You'd use "Der Stein" for "The stone is heavy", but if you want to say "The weight of the stone is high" you have to switch to "Des Steins" -- and to add another twist, sometimes it's "Steines" because of reasons.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago
[-] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Your matrix is correct, op errored on the neutral branch with "den".

[-] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

I don't even know a correct way to translate 'the' to my language, it doesn't really exist

[-] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

I can see now why English is seen as more universal, even if in an alternate timeline where the Anglophones never became dominant.

[-] [email protected] 83 points 1 week ago

Any time I use the wrong definite article my German wife will loudly bark “NEIN!” It’s hot but educational.

[-] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago

Hey, is your wife free later? I could really use some German lessons. I mean German less- I mean German- I mean Ger- I-I-I mean light domming.

[-] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago

I'm not sure any of those french phrases ever translate to "the"

[-] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago

You're right, they don't.

The ones beginning with "d" generally translate as "of the," while the "à" ones generally translate as "to the" or "at the."

French has three words that mean "the": "le" (masculine), "la" (feminine), and "les" (plural).

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[-] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago
[-] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago
[-] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago
[-] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago

Wieso, weshalb, warum? 👏👏

[-] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago

Wer nicht fragt, bleibt dumm!

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago
[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Die gibt es überall zu sehen

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[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

In Norwegian (or rest of scandinavistan, as far as I know) we don't even use "the". Suffixes are used instead.

Fish = Fisk
The fish (single) = Fisken
The fish (plural) = Fiskene

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

So, is there no differentiation between "a fish" and "the fish"?

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

A fish - en fisk
The fish - fisken

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

English would be a lot more fun if they did the same as us.

A fish

Fisha

A man

Mana

A book

Booka.

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[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I'm trilingual and two of the languages don't even have this bs lol (Mandarin, Japanese, English).

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[-] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Edit: Shit, I mistook the original meme as about grammatical cases instead of articles. I think Finnish has 15 cases. 🤔🫣

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[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

él la los las

Ellos ellas

Eso esa

Esos Esas.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

English is schizo, but “the” is actually a very nice simplification, and It hardly impacts the communication.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

I could see the value in changing the article if the noun itself didn't change. For example, if Spanish said "la casa" for singular and "las casa" for plural. Then the article would be all you need to know if something is plural or singular. But, every language I'm aware of (which isn't all that many) changes both the article and the noun. Using "the" in English removes this unnecessary redundancy. But, English is ugly in that whether you add an "s" for plural or "es" seems somewhat arbitrary.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Spanish is redundant. One house is “la casa”, several are “las casas”. It pluralizes both articles and nouns.

Also, like English, nouns are pluralized with several suffixes, but the rules are very clear. Any Spanish speaker can pluralize correctly nouns they’ve never seen before, none of that octopi/octopuses, virii/viruses weirdness.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Octopodes.

It's Greek-based, not Latin. English often tries to keep certain rules about loan words from other languages. So, the plural of "alumnus" isn't "alumneses" but "alumni". It also mostly keeps the spelling of loan words, which causes all kinds of problems when that spelling is very different from English spelling. For example, "voila" is so different from how someone would spell it in English that a lot of people write "wala" because they don't know French.

But, I agree that other than having gendered nouns, Spanish is a much more sensible language than English. It does have its quirks though, like "si" vs "sí", "te" vs "té" or "él" vs "el". I get that those are to distinguish homonyms, but are they really necessary? Words like "cara" and "sierra" exist and it's just like any homonym in English. Spanish also has silent letters like "h" so "errar" and "herrar" are pronounced the same but written differently. Also, "y" and "ll" are often pronounced the same way, and many Spanish speakers can't differentiate between "b" and "v".

[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Despite being theoretically most correct, octopodes is least correct in English because it doesn't actually matter what the root of a word is if everybody uses it differently.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Yes, that's what makes it so good. :)

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Yorkshire:
T' (Glottal stop sound)

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

I'm not sure it's kosher to count à la and de la as separate definite articles.

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[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

More like: by the, of the, for the, to the, belonging to the etc.

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[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

You guys have articles?

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Me speaking a language which uses quotes instead of the

[-] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

That kid is about to ruin someone's microwave lunch.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Die Nichteinhaltung der Fallzahlen von eins bis vier vom Mittelpunkt ausgehend stört mich massiv.

Der, des, dem, den

Die, der, der, die

Das, des, dem, das

Die, der, den, die

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this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
601 points (97.5% liked)

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