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I use this German-English dictionary from Babylon. It puts die in front of the German word Jahrtausend from which I infer the word is feminine, but it is neuter in other dictionaries.

screenshot_Jahrtausend

Is there any reason/explanation for that?

Christian Geiselmann
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Sasan
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not about the German language. – infinitezero Nov 03 '19 at 22:48
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    From Babylon? Cuneiform I hope? – Dan Nov 03 '19 at 23:15
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    It may be because there is Tausend in neuter and there is Tausend in feminine, as in "the number 1000" https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Tausend_Zahl. This is how they got it wrong. – Dan Nov 03 '19 at 23:16
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    I never heard of a dictionary called Babylon. I feel this is contraindicative to your idea that it was famous. – Christian Geiselmann Nov 03 '19 at 23:18
  • @Dan Thank you very much! You are the only one who actually answered the question. Others have all just questioned the question, as is usual here. – Sasan Nov 03 '19 at 23:35
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    If you are interested in alternatives: reasonably good dictionaries are Leo https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/ and Dict-cc https://www.dict.cc/ – Christian Geiselmann Nov 03 '19 at 23:45
  • As for your question (which was Why should a dictionary make such a mistake?, the answer is: it shouldn't. - I also do not find Dan's explanation all too convincing. Still it is a regular thing: das Jahrhundert, das Jahrzehnt, das Jahrfünft... – Christian Geiselmann Nov 04 '19 at 00:20
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    The reason that questions are usually questioned here is, that a lot of them show no self-effort. For this question I can only say, that this site is about the German language and your question is about a mistake in a dictionary. While it may be an interesting question, it's unfortunately the wrong place to ask. – infinitezero Nov 04 '19 at 00:43
  • @ChristianGeiselmann I guess I've seen people here who were let down by Leo. Oh, right, a Chinese guy was puzzled by wrong info there. – Dan Nov 04 '19 at 01:26
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    @ChristianGeiselmann please don't recommend it... https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/54746/n-in-genitive-indefinite-plural/54747#54747 – Dan Nov 04 '19 at 04:08
  • @ChristianGeiselmann My question is not that. – Sasan Nov 04 '19 at 10:14
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    @Sasan Well, yes, now that you edited the question, it is indeed different. Now it is "Is there a reason for that?" - Answer: No, there is no reasonable reason for claiming that Jahrtausend was femininum. It simply isn't. It is a mistake in the online dictionary. (But I think the question is a viable question now.) – Christian Geiselmann Nov 04 '19 at 12:48
  • @Sasan: Please add a screenshot from your source. It seems to have a paywall (for me), so I cannot take a look at it. – Shegit Brahm Nov 04 '19 at 15:35
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    @ShegitBrahm Screenshot added – Arsak Nov 04 '19 at 17:37

1 Answers1

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German compound words take the gender of the rightmost word in the meaning in which is was used to create the compound, e.g. der Elternteil vs. das Fertigteil.

German has two genders for the word "Tausend", depending on the meaning. If an entity consisting of thousand smaller entities is meant, it's neuter.

If we, however, relate to the "number 2000", Tausend becomes feminine. Usage examples:

Trotz heißer Temperaturen kamen am Wochenende an die 1000 Besucher zum Klimaschutz-Aktionstag des Kreises in Bistensee. (note the article doesn't belong to Besucher but to the "1000")

Insgesamt sollen an die 1000 Gefangene freigelassen werden

Compare:

"Ich habe eine 1 in Mathe bekommen!"

Low budget free online dictionaries seem to employ scripts for gender tagging, in this case based on the "basis" word. As the basis word has two genders, the script appears to have taken on the feminine version of the word with the meaning "number 2000" and applied it to the compound.

On a side note, as for the usage of the said dictionary, I would recommend using the most authoritative sources such as Duden, DWDS or Collins Cobuild/Oxford, who have both the resources to avoid such mistakes and the renowned reputation to care about. Also refer to the list https://german.stackexchange.com/a/9535/9739 (apart from Leo, which sometimes would have weird mistakes confusing people and forcing them to ask on stack exchange, and is in general not quite informative, as it does not cite any usage cases for your enter link description here in question).

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Dan
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    This is a hypothesis on the genesis of this mistake in the "Babylon" dictionary. It sounds plausible at first. However, if the mistake was produced by a sloppy algorithm, it should repeat. The entry for Jahrhundert though states correctly das Jahrhundert, see: 107.6.141.14/definition/Jahrhundert/English. Same for das Jahrzehnt. And even the much rarer Jahrfünft is correctly reported as das, see 107.6.141.14/definition/Jahrf%C3%BCnft/English. So, how does this fit into the hypothesis of die Jahrtausend being algorithm-generated? – Christian Geiselmann Nov 05 '19 at 10:05
  • This answer is not correct. We say “an die 1000 Besucher” not because “1000” is (supposedly) feminine, but because “Besucher” is plural. It is like “Wo sind die fünf Kinder?”. – fdb Nov 05 '19 at 15:12
  • @fdb I think it is hard to decide where the die in an die tausend Besucher comes from. Why are you so convinced that Dan's idea is wrong? Do you have arguments for it? (I mean, not only that your idea is also possible; rather, why your idea is more plauble than Dan's?) – Christian Geiselmann Nov 05 '19 at 15:27
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    @ChristianGeiselmann. To begin with: you yourself write "tausend" (numeral) not "Tausend" (noun).. – fdb Nov 05 '19 at 15:37
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    @fdb Spelling conventions are not necessarily proof of underlying semantic or syntactic structure. – Christian Geiselmann Nov 05 '19 at 17:05
  • @fdb please explain. Do you challenge Dudens statement that Tausend as a numeral is feminine? – Dan Nov 05 '19 at 21:52