German grammar with the natural gender of what is described. However, since the diminutive forms ending in "-chen" or "-lein" are grammatically neuter, there exist several notable counterexamples such as "das Mädchen" ("girl") and "das Fräulein" ("miss"). Thus these are not illogical, whereas "das Weib" (old, regional or anthropological: woman; a cognate of the English "wife") is really an exception. Furthermore, in German, the gender of nouns without natural gender is not predictable. For example, the three common pieces of cutlery all have different genders: "das Messer" ("knife") is neuter, "die Gabel" ("fork") is feminine, and "der Löffel" ("spoon") is masculine. Students
Sarah Messer Michigan, respectively. For many years she taught as an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in the Department of Creative Writing. In 2010, Messer co-founded One Pause Poetry, an on-line audio archive and reading series in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Currently she teaches at the Residential College at the University of Michigan, and is a cheese maker at White Lotus Farms. Sarah Messer Sarah Messer (born 1966) is an American poet and author. She was raised in Marshfield, Massachusetts, in the Hatch Homestead, a house built in the 17th century that was the subject of her book