There’s definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.
There’s definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.
Actually, Mädchen (meaning “girl” in German) is a diminutive. It comes from Magd (an old word for “maid” or “young woman”) with the -chen suffix, which is a common diminutive in German.
The -chen suffix makes words grammatically neuter, which is why Mädchen takes das instead of die, even though it refers to a female person.
I’m not German but the same applies to the Dutch word for girl, and we’ve the same rule for neutral. By the way, ‘magd’ in Dutch means virgin (maagd to be precise), which sounds incredibly inappropriate to be going around calling someone; little virgin (/¯ ಠ_ಠ)/¯
Sorry if you already know this, but it sounds from the wording of your post that you might not know that “maid” or “maiden” means virgin also.
No need to be sorry. I didn’t realise, in Dutch I don’t think that connotation stuck for the equivalent, meid. That simply means girl.
“my maiden aunt” means an aunt who never married (and it’s presumed to be virginal because what other option is there /s)
So yeah