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
Stephen Messer (entrepreneur) the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) from 1995-1996 working with Columbia Business School Professor Eli Noam. While at CITI, Messer covered Cybercommunications (the Internet), the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and other key mass media issues of the time. Messer has remained an affiliated research fellow at CITI and is a regular speaker at Columbia Business School on topics ranging from electronic commerce to emerging technologies. In 1996, Messer recognized the Internet's enormous potential, and with his sister, Heidi Messer, set out to create an online distribution network that would allow websites to monetize their traffic through performance based links. Messer