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 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 "Red House: Being a Mostly Accurate Account of New England's Oldest Continuously Lived-In House". Messer has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and others. In 2008-2009, she was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Messer earned undergraduate and master's degrees from Middlebury College and the University of