# German Gender



## dihydrogen monoxide

Some German words change their gender if it's used in a dialect, ie. German word has a different gender from standard German. I was wondering if there are other languages
like that with similar phenomena or is German unique in that case?


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## ahvalj

This is facilitated in German because the morphological distinctions between nouns of different genders are largely washed out. Languages with less devastated morphology normally tend to express the gender opposition more explicitly. In Slavic languages of the written period, the greatest source of confusion are the former _i_-stems (_gostь_ (m) vs. _kostь_ (f)), but even there the redistribution has mostly already happened and things have already settled.


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## bloop123

Ahvalj

That's interesting because I have noticed that when I compare an Italian and a French word with a common Latin root I notice that (in general) the Italian word has a more stable gender. As Italian has more obvious gender markings than in French, this would mean that maybe native speakers are more confident that a word 'feels' more masculine or feminine so it is less likely to change. Would this hypothesis be confirmed with your study of French and Spanish where Spanish has more obvious gender markings than French?


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## bloop123

Dihydrogen monoxide
To answer your question yes it does happen across very similar languages/dialects and it happens  regularly with Romance languages eg all words in French that end in eur and are not professions are feminine while in Italian a word with the same root would end in ore but would be masculine.  In Latin it would also be masculine. 
French la couleur (colour and feminine)
Italian il colore (colour and masculine)
Latin color (colour, masculine, nominative)
I'm a little confused by your question. Did you mean in a case of diglossia where one register/dialect would use one gender and the other perhaps  the more formal/official one would use another. In that case I'm sure it happens I just don't have any examples.


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## myšlenka

The phenomenon exists in Norwegian and I wouldn't be surprised if you find it in the other Scandinavian languages too.


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## Nino83

bloop123 said:


> To answer your question yes it does happen across very similar languages/dialects and it happens  regularly with Romance languages eg all words in French that end in eur and are not professions are feminine while in Italian a word with the same root would end in ore but would be masculine.  In Latin it would also be masculine.



Ciao bloop123. 
This happens also in Portuguese:  
ille dolor (lat), il dolore (it), el dolor (sp) but la doleur (fr), a dor (pt) 
ille color (lat), il colore (it), el color (sp) but la coleur (fr), a cor (pt) 

Sometimes it also happens in Spanish: 
ille flos (illum florem, lat), il fiore (it) but la fleur (fr), la flor (sp), a flor (pt) 

Anyway, it doesn't seem to be systematic, for example: 
ille amor (lat), l'amore (it), el amor (sp), l'amour (fr), o amor (pt).


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## dihydrogen monoxide

What I was asking is if it happens specifically in one language? Some words in Bavarian or Swiss German will have a different gender than standard German. I'm asking if you can find this in one language. I'm not asking about the development of gender, just if words in dialect have the same gender as the standard variety.


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## Nino83

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> What I was asking is if it happens specifically in one language?



No, it doesn't happen in Italian (I'm quite sure about Italian languages under the La Spezia-Rimini line, I'm not sure if it happens in Gallo-Italic languages).


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## bloop123

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> What I was asking is if it happens specifically in one language? Some words in Bavarian or Swiss German will have a different gender than standard German. I'm asking if you can find this in one language. I'm not asking about the development of gender, just if words in dialect have the same gender as the standard variety.


Wouldn't that depend on your definition of the difference between a language and a dialect?


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## bloop123

Nino83 said:


> Ciao bloop123.
> This happens also in Portuguese:
> ille dolor (lat), il dolore (it), el dolor (sp) but la doleur (fr), a dor (pt)
> ille color (lat), il colore (it), el color (sp) but la coleur (fr), a cor (pt)
> 
> Sometimes it also happens in Spanish:
> ille flos (illum florem, lat), il fiore (it) but la fleur (fr), la flor (sp), a flor (pt)
> 
> Anyway, it doesn't seem to be systematic, for example:
> ille amor (lat), l'amore (it), el amor (sp), l'amour (fr), o amor (pt).



Ciao Nino83
Thanks for your input. It's interesting that only Italian uses the masculine gender for the word for flower.  Although your example doesn't contradict my statement. My rule (between just Italian and French) works with words ending in eur in French.  L'amour doesn't apply to this rule.  However I shouldn't have used the word 'all'. I'm sure that there are exceptions.


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## Nino83

bloop123 said:


> My rule (between just Italian and French) works with words ending in eur in French.



Yes, you're right (after a brief research, with some exception like "coeur", "honneur" and other few words, it works well). 
Thank you for the tip.


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## bloop123

Nino83 said:


> Yes, you're right (after a brief research, with some exception like "coeur", "honneur" and other few words, it works well).
> Thank you for the tip.



No problem!


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> This is facilitated in German because the morphological distinctions between nouns of different genders are largely washed out. Languages with less devastated morphology normally tend to express the gender opposition more explicitly. In Slavic languages of the written period, the greatest source of confusion are the former _i_-stems (_gostь_ (m) vs. _kostь_ (f)), but even there the redistribution has mostly already happened and things have already settled.


German gender gender _variation _can hardly be explained by gender _confusion_. Gender markers is articles and adjectives are largely sufficient to offset any loss of markers in the nouns themselves. In Low German, the masculine-feminine distinction very reduced, the accusative _-n_ is the only way to distinguish masculine from feminine. Yet in Low German as in other dialects gender variation occurs mainly between masculine and neuter and, less frequently, between feminine and neuter; gender variation between masculine and feminine is very rare (if it exists at all; I can't think of an example right now).

Also, gender variation that occurs in within the same dialect area tends to produce specialized meanings (e.g. _See (f) = sea_ - _See (n) = lake_). This is evidence that the gender variation remains noticeable to the speakers. Gender confusion only plays a with foreign technical terms with limited usage contexts (Is it _das Perfekt_ or _der Perfekt_? is a frequent question).


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## Angelo di fuoco

bloop123 said:


> Ciao Nino83
> Thanks for your input. It's interesting that only Italian uses the masculine gender for the word for flower.  Although your example doesn't contradict my statement. My rule (between just Italian and French) works with words ending in eur in French.  L'amour doesn't apply to this rule.  However I shouldn't have used the word 'all'. I'm sure that there are exceptions.



Amour applies very well to this rule, even if it has -our instead of -eur. It is one of the very few words in French that (can) change gender: always masculine in the singular, in can be feminine in the plural with specific meanings or in a higher literary register. 


Catalan is very interesting - and confusing - in this aspect . Most of the nouns ending in -or (except "professions" or nouns derived from verbs) are feminine in medieval Catalan (including amor), but today most of them are generally used as masculine nouns (except flor), although even the normative dictionary of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans recognises both genders as valid.
Mar (sea) can be both feminine and masculine in Spanish and Catalan, sometimes indistinctly, sometimes with a neat preference for one gender in stable expressions. In French, the sea is always feminine, while in Portuguese and Italian it's always masculine. You can also observe gender variation across the Romance languages in words like salt (f in Spanish & Catalan, m in the other languages), tooth (f in French & Catalan, m in the other languages), planet (f in French, m in the other languages).
Sometimes the plural of a neuter noun in Latin (e. g. folium, folia) is reanalised lika feminine singular, hence the doublets like foglio & foglia, hojo & hoja, full & fulla in Italian, Spanish & Catalan and the feminine gender of the noun in French & Portuguese. The doublets means leaf in the masculine and sheet (of paper) in the feminine. Another case like this is velum, vela which gives veil in the masculine and sail in the feminine.
The word œuvre in French is also one of those, but here the usage is even more confused, since many Frenchmen don't know that it also can be masculine - there's a subtle distinction in meaning. The "opera omnia" meaning of œuvre ought to be masculine, but is mostly treated as if it were feminine. A case of gender confusion is "effluve", which, although normatively masculine (effluvio in Italian, effluvium in Latin) is often taken to be feminine, even by famous writers or poets like Rimbaud.


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## Nino83

Angelo di fuoco said:


> The doublets means leaf in the masculine and sheet (of paper) in the feminine.



It's the other way around (foglio = sheet, foglia = leaf).


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## Angelo di fuoco

berndf said:


> German gender gender _variation _can hardly be explained by gender _confusion_. Gender markers is articles and adjectives are largely sufficient to offset any loss of markers in the nouns themselves. In Low German, the masculine-feminine distinction very reduced, the accusative _-n_ is the only way to distinguish masculine from feminine. Yet in Low German as in other dialects gender variation occurs mainly between masculine and neuter and, less frequently, between feminine and neuter; *gender variation between masculine and feminine is very rare* (if it exists at all; I can't think of an example right now).
> 
> Also, gender variation that occurs in within the same dialect area tends to produce specialized meanings (e.g. _See (f) = sea_ - *See (n) = lake*). This is evidence that the gender variation remains noticeable to the speakers. Gender confusion only plays a with foreign technical terms with limited usage contexts (Is it _das Perfekt_ or _der Perfekt_? is a frequent question).



Das See?


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## bloop123

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Amour applies very well to this rule, even if it has -our instead of -eur. It is one of the very few words in French that (can) change gender: always masculine in the singular, in can be feminine in the plural with specific meanings or in a higher literary register.
> 
> 
> Catalan is very interesting - and confusing - in this aspect . Most of the nouns ending in -or (except "professions" or nouns derived from verbs) are feminine in medieval Catalan (including amor), but today most of them are generally used as masculine nouns (except flor), although even the normative dictionary of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans recognises both genders as valid.
> Mar (sea) can be both feminine and masculine in Spanish and Catalan, sometimes indistinctly, sometimes with a neat preference for one gender in stable expressions. In French, the sea is always feminine, while in Portuguese and Italian it's always masculine. You can also observe gender variation across the Romance languages in words like salt (f in Spanish & Catalan, m in the other languages), tooth (f in French & Catalan, m in the other languages), planet (f in French, m in the other languages).
> Sometimes the plural of a neuter noun in Latin (e. g. folium, folia) is reanalised lika feminine singular, hence the doublets like foglio & foglia, hojo & hoja, full & fulla in Italian, Spanish & Catalan and the feminine gender of the noun in French & Portuguese. The doublets means leaf in the masculine and sheet (of paper) in the feminine. Another case like this is velum, vela which gives veil in the masculine and sail in the feminine.
> The word œuvre in French is also one of those, but here the usage is even more confused, since many Frenchmen don't know that it also can be masculine - there's a subtle distinction in meaning. The "opera omnia" meaning of œuvre ought to be masculine, but is mostly treated as if it were feminine. A case of gender confusion is "effluve", which, although normatively masculine (effluvio in Italian, effluvium in Latin) is often taken to be feminine, even by famous writers or poets like Rimbaud.



I'm not sure if it applies to natives. For an Italian example to me the distinction between il tavolo (m) and la tavola (f) (table) is quite subtle and confusing. In fact it's only la table in French. I remember not being taught the difference. My Italian teacher just noted that it was one of the few nouns that it didn't matter which one to use. I used to use both, but once I started to learn French, La tavola continued to creep in more. 

Here is a list of some more differences which I have collected on my phone for a period of time.

L'auberge (f)  l'albergo
All Ore (suffix) m eur (suffix) f
Not including professions
L'oeuvre (m) l'opera (f)
La planète Il pianeta 
La figue il fico
La dent il dente
La coutume il costume
L'ambiance (f) l'ambiente (m)
La mer il mare
La fleur il fiore (from eur/ore suffix)
L'oreille (f) l'orecchio (but le orecchie)
Le sable la sabbia
L'ongle (m) l'unghia
L'horloge (f) l'orologio
Les gens (m) however (f) in some phrases la gente
Le front la fronte
Le sort la sorte (fate) 
La poitrine il petto
La vidéo il video
La preme/ il premio reward
Le manque la mancanza
L'art (m) l'arte (f)
Note alternating double consonants
Le personnage il personaggio
La périod il periodo
La planète il pianeta
Le dimanche la domenica
L'escrime (m) la scherma fencing

And thanks to some nice people on this forum
Note exceptions to eur/ore rule
L'honneur (m) l'onore (m) 
Le Coeur (m) il cuore (m)

L'amour (m) sometimes (f) l'amore (m)


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## bloop123

bloop123 said:


> I'm not sure if it applies to natives. For an Italian example to me the distinction between il tavolo (m) and la tavola (f) (table) is quite subtle and confusing. In fact it's only la table in French. I remember not being taught the difference. My Italian teacher just noted that it was one of the few nouns that it didn't matter which one to use. I used to use both, but once I started to learn French, La tavola continued to creep in more.
> 
> Here is a list of some more differences which I have collected on my phone for a period of time.
> 
> L'auberge (f)  l'albergo
> All Ore (suffix) m eur (suffix) f
> Not including professions
> L'oeuvre (m) l'opera (f)
> La planète Il pianeta
> La figue il fico
> La dent il dente
> La coutume il costume
> L'ambiance (f) l'ambiente (m)
> La mer il mare
> La fleur il fiore (from eur/ore suffix)
> L'oreille (f) l'orecchio (but le orecchie)
> Le sable la sabbia
> L'ongle (m) l'unghia
> L'horloge (f) l'orologio
> Les gens (m) however (f) in some phrases la gente
> Le front la fronte
> Le sort la sorte (fate)
> La poitrine il petto
> La vidéo il video
> La preme/ il premio reward
> Le manque la mancanza
> L'art (m) l'arte (f)
> Note alternating double consonants
> Le personnage il personaggio
> La périod il periodo
> La planète il pianeta
> Le dimanche la domenica
> L'escrime (m) la scherma fencing
> 
> And thanks to some nice people on this forum
> Note exceptions to eur/ore rule
> L'honneur (m) l'onore (m)
> Le Coeur (m) il cuore (m)
> 
> L'amour (m) sometimes (f) l'amore (m)



Sorry
Personaggio and personnage aren't included with differing genders. I just had it in there to remind me about differing double consonants


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## Angelo di fuoco

Thanks, I didn't know horloge was feminine.
Your teacher wasn't quite right: tavolo means writing table/ desk, tavola means eating table.
L'escrime is said to be feminine by all the dictionaries I've consulted including Larousse.

With the ears in Italian it's more complicated than that. In theory, you have bot orecchio, orecchi and orecchia, orecchie, but you usually use the masculine form for the singular and the feminine form for the plural.
With oeuvre it is also more complicated than that: two genders with two different meanings. An explanation from a dictionary would be too long to quote it in full, so I better give a link to Larousse.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Italian has both fronte (m) and fronte (f). The first is the military term, the second is the part of the face or the opposite side.


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## bloop123

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Thanks, I didn't know horloge was feminine.
> Your teacher wasn't quite right: tavolo means writing table/ desk, tavola means eating table.
> L'escrime is said to be feminine by all the dictionaries I've consulted including Larousse.
> 
> With the ears in Italian it's more complicated than that. In theory, you have bot orecchio, orecchi and orecchia, orecchie, but you usually use the masculine form for the singular and the feminine form for the plural.
> With oeuvre it is also more complicated than that: two genders with two different meanings. An explanation from a dictionary would be too long to quote it in full, so I better give a link to Larousse.



Thanks a lot. Your corrections and explanations are very good!


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## bloop123

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Italian has both fronte (m) and fronte (f). The first is the military term, the second is the part of the face or the opposite side.


I should have been more clear. I meant the forehead


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## bloop123

Ok so with a little help from the dictionary it's

Il fronte (military front as in battle front) le front
But 
La fronte le front (forehead)


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## Nino83

in italian "il tavolo" is the physic thing (there's no difference between the desk in your room and the table in the kitchen) while "la tavola" is the place where you eat some food, in a philosophic sense, for example you say "non si gioca a tavola", i.e "you are not allowed to play while you're eating". The same thing for "apparecchia la tavola" (in order to have a dinner) or "sedetevi a tavola" (in order to eat something)), .


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## Angelo di fuoco

OK, thanks. So I was pointing somewhere in the right direction, but not quite.


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## Peterdg

This is a reply to the original question:

Yes, it also happens in Dutch and not only between the standard and dialects but also between the two main varieties. As you may know, Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands and in the northern part of Belgium. To make things easier, I will call the variety of the Netherlands ND (Netherlands Dutch) and the Belgian variety BD (Belgian Dutch).

Dutch knows three genders: masculine, femenine and neuter.

Dutch does not have clear morphological gender markers. The only place where gender is important is with the defined article ("de" for masuline and femenine and "het" for neuter), in possesive pronouns ("zijn" for masucline and neuter and "haar" for femenine), in the accusative and dative personal pronouns ("hem" for masculine and neuter and "haar" for femenine) and in the relatives ("die" for masculine and femenine and "dat" for neuter). I think that is all.

Now it is so that gender sensitivity has almost completely been lost in ND while in BD it is still very consistently used. In ND, the tendency is to make everything masculine. There is still some consciousness between neuter and masculine/femenine, but the difference between femenine and masculine has almost completely disappeared. So, in ND, the following would be very normal: "Die rode tafel daar, die staat niet op *zijn* plaats". This would be unthinkable in BD.

Remains the question why this gender difference is disappearing in ND and why it is still so active in BD. My theory about this is that in most Belgian dialects, we use a different undefined article for masculine, femenine and neuter words. I think that is not the case for ND dialects. So, while in standard Dutch, it would be "een man" (masucline), "een mand" (femenine) and "een motief" (neuter) in most dialects it would ne "*ne* man" (masculine) and "*een* mand" (femenine) and "*e* motief" (neuter). (This is only an example: the undefined article in dialect also depends on the first letter of the following word (for phonological reasons): that's why my 3 words started with an "m". But in all cases, the undefined article that is used will make it clear which gender the word has).


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> German gender gender _variation _can hardly be explained by gender _confusion_. Gender markers is articles and adjectives are largely sufficient to offset any loss of markers in the nouns themselves. In Low German, the masculine-feminine distinction very reduced, the accusative _-n_ is the only way to distinguish masculine from feminine. Yet in Low German as in other dialects gender variation occurs mainly between masculine and neuter and, less frequently, between feminine and neuter; gender variation between masculine and feminine is very rare (if it exists at all; I can't think of an example right now).
> 
> Also, gender variation that occurs in within the same dialect area tends to produce specialized meanings (e.g. _See (f) = sea_ - _See (n) = lake_). This is evidence that the gender variation remains noticeable to the speakers. Gender confusion only plays a with foreign technical terms with limited usage contexts (Is it _das Perfekt_ or _der Perfekt_? is a frequent question).


Duden (I have a version of the early sixties) states:

Viele Substantive haben im Laufe der Sprachgeschichte ihr Geschlecht geändert. Nicht immer können wir die Gründe dafür erkennen. In den meisten Fällen jedoch wurde der Geschlechtswandel durch Analogie bewirkt:

a) von der Sache her
mhd. _daz_ sper wird nhd. _der_ Speer (weil: der Spieß, der Ger)
lat. murus (Mask.) wird _die_ Mauer (weil: die Wand)
franz. la douzaine (Fem.) wird _das_ Dutzend (weil: das Hundert, das Tausend, das Schock).

b) von der Endung des Substantivs her
Im Mittelhochdeutschen waren z. B. Substantive auf -e weitgehend feminin. Deshalb glichen sich viele ursprünglich maskuline oder neutrale Substantive auf -e diesem Geschlecht an:
mhd.: _der_ bluome, nhd. _die_ Blume; mhd. _der_ vane, nhd. _die_ Fahne.

Aus dem gleichen Grunde wurden ursprüngliche Feminina zu Maskulina, weil sie ihr Endungs-e verloren:
mhd.: _diu_ boteche, nhd. _der_ Bottich; mhd. _die_ phlume, nhd. _der_ Flaum.

Schließlich wurden Maskulina oder Neutra zu Feminina, weil ihr ursprünglicher Singular ohne -e durch eine aus dem Plural abgeleitete weibliche Form auf -e verdrängt wurde:
mhd. Singular: _der_ tran, Plural: _die_ trene, nhd. Singular: _die_ Träne, Plural: _die_ Tränen.

Fremdwörter unterliegen oft der gleichen Analogiewirkung:
franz. _le_ babage (Mask.) wird _die_ Bagage; franz. _le_ flanc (Mask.) wird _die_ Flanke; franz. _le_ cigare (Mask.) wird _die_ Zigarre.


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## berndf

The passage you quoted is about _diachronic_ gender to _change_. This thread is about _synchronic_ gender _variation_.


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## OLN

bloop123 said:


> My rule (between just Italian and French) works with words ending in eur in French.  L'amour doesn't apply to this rule.  However I shouldn't have used the word 'all'. I'm sure that there are exceptions.


Your rule applies for many abstract words but there are so many words ending in _-eur_ that you can hardly speak of exceptions.
labeur, pleur, heur/bonheur/malheur, cœur, chœur, honneur/déshonneur, seigneur, sieur
Nouns that are not professions: débiteur, envoyeur, antérieur,  extérieur, intérieur, spectateur,adulateur, acheteur, agitateur, tueur, rodeur, ravisseur, agresseur, baigneur, admirateur, auteur, majeur, mineur, etc.
Technical words: moteur, réacteur, vecteur, viseur, synthétiseur, ascenseur, collimateur, ordinateur, tableur, congélateur, aspirateur, flotteur, aéroglisseur, atomiseur, variateur, retardateur, transmetteur, accelérateur, détonateur, anti-dépresseur, etc.


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## bloop123

OLN
I'm not sure of the technical term/way to describe what I mean but a lot of the words you give are derrived from a noun which does/experiences the original word. Which is similar to professions.
Eg
Moteur something which moves
Débiteur someone who owes debt
Retardateur something which slows something else
Tueur someone who kills

Just like a professeur a profession was someone who professes although this word is now also used to mean a teacher

Is there a term for these types of words in general?

Also moderators feel free to create a new thread. I feel this is getting a little of topic


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## bloop123

Taken from http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1059&context=utk_interstp2 I really recommend this. It's easy to understand and offers some great explanations/background info from page 17 

Nouns which do not denote an agent or a doer end in that end in ore (it) usually end in eur (fr) and are feminine in French and masculine in Italian

This is what I was trying to say in my last post.
I would say about 70% of your exceptions would fit into the category of an agent or a doer so it's more applicable than otherwise thought


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## Nino83

Yes, also I interpreted "profession" in that way (i.e someone who does something). 
In that sense, the rule is very consistent.


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## bearded

Hello
A couple of examples with dialects from Northern Italy:
- la lom (Bolognese dialect), Italian ''il lume'' (the light, the lamp)  
- la sal/la sale (some Lombard dialects), Italian ''il sale'' (the salt)
- La Cùlmine (name of a mountain place in Valtellina, Lombardy), Ital ''il culmine'' (the top/summit)


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## Hulalessar

dihydrogen monoxide is of course supposing that we can easily decide what a language is as opposed to a dialect. However, if Anadalusian Spanish is accepted as a dialect of Spanish it does have one or two instances of words having a different gender to the standard language.


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## gburtonio

I can think of an example for Italian – 'bucato' (laundry). It's masculine in Italian, but becomes feminine 'bugada' in Venetian dialect. There are probably others.


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## Sepia

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> Some German words change their gender if it's used in a dialect, ie. German word has a different gender from standard German. I was wondering if there are other languages
> like that with similar phenomena or is German unique in that case?



First thing we have to ask is what you mean with "used in a dialect". Basically High-German was a regional language in its own right and all the others were too. So of course some words that are identical may exist in more than one of these languages, but have different genders. You'll find other examples when you compare High German with Scandinavian languages or the Scandinavian languages with each other. 

And then again some identical words with slightly different meanings were adopted in High German and you can tell one from the other because of different genders - der See, die See - is probably the best known.


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## dihydrogen monoxide

Sepia said:


> First thing we have to ask is what you mean with "used in a dialect". Basically High-German was a regional language in its own right and all the others were too. So of course some words that are identical may exist in more than one of these languages, but have different genders. You'll find other examples when you compare High German with Scandinavian languages or the Scandinavian languages with each other.
> 
> And then again some identical words with slightly different meanings were adopted in High German and you can tell one from the other because of different genders - der See, die See - is probably the best known.



In German case, anything that is not Hochdeutsch.


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## berndf

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> In German case, anything that is not Hochdeutsch.


I guess by _Hochdeutsch_ you mean _Standarddeutsch_ (in linguistics _Hochdeutsch _refers to all dialects that exhibit some or all of the characteristics of the second consonant shift; what is called _Hochdeutsch_ in common usage is called _Standarddeutsch_ in linguistics). That is a problematic definition. There are gender variations between regional varieties of the standard register (_der_ Teller in Germany; _das_ Teller in Austria) and there are variations that exist simultaneously in the same local variety and register, sometimes indiscriminately, like der Gummi or das Gummi, sometimes with semantic differentiation, like _das Teil_ (a separable part of a whole) and _der Teil_ (an integral part of a whole) or _die See_ (sea) and _der See_ (lake).


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## dihydrogen monoxide

berndf said:


> I guess by _Hochdeutsch_ you mean _Standarddeutsch_ (in linguistics _Hochdeutsch _refers to all dialects that exhibit some or all of the characteristics of the second consonant shift; what is called _Hochdeutsch_ in common usage is called _Standarddeutsch_ in linguistics). That is a problematic definition. There are gender variations between regional varieties of the standard register (_der_ Teller in Germany; _das_ Teller in Austria) and there are variations that exist simultaneously in the same local variety and register, sometimes indiscriminately, like der Gummi or das Gummi, sometimes with semantic differentiation, like _das Teil_ (a separable part of a whole) and _der Teil_ (an integral part of a whole) or _die See_ (sea) and _der See_ (lake).



Yes, I mean Standarddeutsch.


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## francisgranada

Angelo di fuoco said:


> ... Mar (sea) can be both feminine and masculine in Spanish and Catalan, sometimes indistinctly, sometimes with a neat preference for one gender in stable expressions. In French, the sea is always feminine, while in Portuguese and Italian it's always masculine.


Interestingly, there is a village _Marmorta _in Northern Italy.

P.S. Pehaps _il fine/la fine_ (Italian) was not yet mentioned ...


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## bearded

In Italian, between _il fine_ and _la fine_ there is a semantic difference:  Il fine = the aim, the purpose , la fine = the end.


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## bragpipes

As @dihydrogen monoxide might already know, the de-palatalization of the endings in some words has caused confusion in Serbo-Croatian.    The classic example is bol (pain) where many think it's masculine.  Had it been bolj, almost no one would confuse its gender.     There's also some confusion with words like pamet and so on.  

People rely on the ending to determine the gender, so de-palatalization throws people off.   There are words like čar where both genders are considered acceptable, but had it been čarj/čarь it's more likely to be perceived as feminine.  

Also, the loss of the consonant at the end changes the gender - večer (m) - veče (n).


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## ahvalj

bragpipes said:


> As @dihydrogen monoxide might already know, the de-palatalization of the endings in some words has caused confusion in Serbo-Croatian.    The classic example is bol (pain) where many think it's masculine.  Had it been bolj, almost no one would confuse its gender.     There's also some confusion with words like pamet and so on.
> 
> People rely on the ending to determine the gender, so de-palatalization throws people off.   There are words like čar where both genders are considered acceptable, but had it been čarj/čarь it's more likely to be perceived as feminine.


Probably not the topic of this thread, but nevertheless: the widely accepted idea is that Slovene and Serbo-Croatian never developed palatalization before front vowels. It is based on the fact that these are the only two modern Slavic languages that normally don't confuse _lj_ and _nj_ developed from iotation with _l_ and _n_ standing before actual or historical _e_ and _i_ (cp. _njima _vs._ nit_)_._ So, _bol_ (unlike _kralj_) may never have had a palatalized _l_.


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## olaszinho

Nino83 said:


> No, it doesn't happen in Italian (I'm quite sure about Italian languages under the La Spezia-Rimini line, I'm not sure if it happens in Gallo-Italic languages).



This phenomenon does happen in other Italian dialects too. For instance la lepre (hare) and l'ape (bee), feminine in Standard Italian, are masculine in my dialect (central Marches, below the so-called La Spezia- Senigallia line) il lepre, l'ape.


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## Red Arrow

In some Belgian dialects of Dutch, they say _'t school, 't stad_ and _de bos_. But in Standard Dutch it is _de school, de stad _and _het bos.
't stad_ mostly refers to the city of Antwerp. (''the city'')


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