[ownlife]

The gender system in German is something Mark Twain poked fun at in his famous essay "The Awful German Language":

"Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl."

https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html