puzzling

[ratcreature]

I don't understand how people who try to insert German endearments into their Charles/Erik fanfic end up with female endings. I get that English is deficient when it comes to the concept of grammatical gender, but the auto-translate bots tend to default to male (e.g. if you enter "my Beloved" into Google translate it gives you "mein Geliebter" as first choice not "meine Geliebte" though it gives you neuter if you don't capitalize, presumably because it assumes some noun ought to follow and is indecisive or something), and plenty of endearments authors could pick are the same for both genders anyway (e.g. "mein Schatz"). So how do authors arrive at the female endings? An additional question is of course whether Erik would choose German of all things as his love language to begin with.

Comments

[ratcreature]

I suppose. I don't tend to use endearments myself in any language, so I probably can't judge. (And my parents used nicknames derived from their first names for each other, and stupid pet names for only their kids, e.g. in they called me "Tüffelchen" of all things, which is "little potato" from the Low German "Tüffel" meaning both potato and "inept, clumsy person", so I could probably claim emotional scarring just from that, though admittedly "Mäuschen" also featured, which is nicer.) But in any case if authors want to go that route they need to make sure the words are right.

Bu if it's any consolation, iirc as a long term historical trend case endings are on the decline in German, in that several are already look the same and fall together. And just look at the genetive which is practically extinct already in spoken language, so it will only be a few more centuries at most until it's like English. Which might be why the word order isn't as flexible as in Latin.

[saraht]

Little Potato! I find that oddly charming.

[shadowvalkyrie]

My mom used to call me "Schneckchen", which isn't much better. I understand why you'd use something like "dear" or "kitten", but most snails/slugs are so fundamentally lacking in adorableness, I don't get it. Same with the potatoes. "Muffin", "sugar", or "honey", I get (hate, but get), but potatoes? Maybe German is just generally horrid at endearments. :D

[ratcreature]

Yeah. It makes you wonder where the now somewhat obsolete slang usage of "Schnecke" for an attractive woman came from too.