"Our small mouse is drinking water."

Translation: Nasza mała mysz pije wodę.

[bkocevski]

Isn't "Nasza mała mysz" a wrong answer? I thought mouse is a male noun.

[immery]

no mysz is female. That gives Polish kids the first lesson of gender of a person(being) vs gramatical gender when they meet Micky Mouse

[bkocevski]

Oh strange, but thank you for clarifying. I guess it is confusing for me since my native language is Macedonian and in our language mouse is always a male noun.

[Vengir]

„Mysz” is an exception of sorts. The normal rules might suggest it's a masculine noun, while it really is a feminine one.

[vytah]

If by "exception" you mean "one of thousands feminine nouns ending in a consonant".

[immery]

I think the rule is if letter is soft- check in dictionary

[vytah]

According to the terminology I used here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/12262354 the rule is "if it's hard, then it's definitely masculine, if soft or mixed – it depends". As I wrote there, -sz is mixed (phonetically hard, but grammatically behaves as if it was soft – because it used to be), so it can end a feminine noun.

[Vengir]

I can't seem to find examples ending with „ń” or „ś”. Just „ć” is probably safest.

[vytah]

ń: toń, jaźń, woń, darń

ś: oś

Source: playing a lot of Scrabble.

[Vengir]

Animals appear to be an exception to that, like „słoń”, „koń”, „łoś”…

[Vengir]

It's not just that. If the noun ends with „ć”, it's still feminine by rule. „Mysz” seems just like an exception.

[vytah]

Masculine: gość, liść

-ć is probably the only consonant that is way more likely to end a feminine noun that a masculine one.

[bkocevski]

Thanks for clarifying.

[Walkinthedog]

moje rodzice zawsze mowily mysza for a mouse.

[Jellei]

I've heard it many times, but it's not considered a correct form.

[Walkinthedog]

I guess the peasants with only four years of schooling at the time more or less created their. own jargon or then again it may have been a regional thing. Back in the day food was referred to as vittles, or correct spelling victuals. Anomalies of locality.