@l-au-abc I was gonna comment and tag you on the post but what I was typing was getting a little long so I’m just making a post about it :’)
ok Germans, Austrians, and people who are fluent in German if I get anything wrong please correct me and don’t come for me I’m just a mere learner of German, bitte und danke <3
So basically in German there are three genders for nouns: feminine (die Katze - the cat), masculine (der Hund - the dog), and neuter (das Brot - the bread). Now as for Nutella, people can’t decide whether it’s gender is die or das (and the one thing almost everyone seems to agree on is that it’s not der). There’s a few arguments for each side, but most people seem to say that one just sounds right as opposed to the other.
one argument for “die Nutella” I see quite frequently is that because Nutella is feminine in the language of origin (Italian (la Nutella)), it should also be feminine in German. Another one is that because Nutella is a “creme” (non-brand term for Nutella is “Nuss-Nougat-Creme” or “Hazelnusscreme”) that means that Nutella should be feminine, because objects that are “cremes” are feminine.
then as for das Nutella, from what I can tell, is most commonly used in Austria. but in Germany it’s about equal with die Nutella. I actually haven’t seen a lot of arguments for why das Nutella would be correct, other than maybe because it’s a brand name it would be neuter.
overall it’s just kinda personal preference as long as it’s not der. There’s not really much of a regional difference where one is more said in one place than another. It’s mostly just kind of a running gag/meme and there is no serious, definitive answer (dict.cc, a German-English translation dictionary, even lists having all three for a gender (see image below)), but I’m sure there’s people out there who get very serious about this argument lol
