Confusion between articles in German...........?

Question

der is male

die is fem

das in net....... right?

so whz would someone saz: Das Mädchen ist auf dem Tisch

isnt Girl fem? and why sometimes der is used with it and not die?

danke

Answer 1

As Neil said same things can have different articles with different words... but normally words which have a clear gender (a woman is female...a cow is female.. a man is male.. and so on) have the according article.

"Mädchen" is neuter that's right...but that has a special reason:

In German the diminutive is mostly built by adding -chen or -lein (and sometimes other forms) at the end of the word.  Often vowels then also change to umlauts.

The important point: Diminutives are ALWAYS neuter!

for example:

der Mann (man) -> das Männlein   (-lein)

der Bär (bear) -> das Bärchen (-chen)

die Flasche (bottle) -> das Fläschchen (-chen)

das Haus (house) -> das Häuschen (-chen)

die Maus (mouse) -> das Mäuschen (-chen)

...

You can see whatever gender the word in its regular form might have it's always changing to neuter when it's  a diminutive.

As you now may already notice, Mädchen also ends with -chen so it looks like a diminutive. And in fact it is one though there is no special diminutive-meaning in it anymore today (in this special case with the word Mädchen (girl) ).

The word "Mädchen" historically came from "Magd" (maidservant) and "Maid" (maid).

Think about bringing it into the diminutive-form and it would be Magd-chen  or Maid-chen  .. as seen above vowels often change to umlauts...in this case it would turns them to "Mägd-chen" and "Mäid-chen". Maidchen or Mäidchen already sounds very smiliar to Mädchen, and Mägdchen could have lost its g somewhere in history (that makes sense cause it's much better speakable without it).

That's where the word "Mädchen" comes from and why it has a neuter instead of (as usual) a female article.