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So a neutron star is kind of.
About the size of Chicago.
Unexpected elements from the BBC World Service.
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Hello, I'm Anand Jagatiya and welcome to Crowd Science from the BBC World Service.
Welcome also to my mum's house, where on a rainy Saturday morning, she's making us a nice cup of Indian tea.
Chai tea.
That's something that happens quite a lot when I go back home, but something that's much rarer is that me and my mum speak my family's native language, Gujarati.
My Gujarati is pretty ropey, and one of the things I find most difficult is making sure that the words I string together are the right gender.
Bukocha or buki Chai, chini, buki, buki, jaini.
Buki, that is tea powder or tea leaves ground up very fine.
Chai, which is tea, is what's known as a masculine noun, whereas bukki or powder, is what's known as a feminine noun.
So can you have buko as well?
Bukko is like crumbs or bigger.
But bukki also has a masculine form, buko, which is used for stuff that's ground more coarsely, like crumbs.
Finally, there are words that are neither masculine or feminine, but neuter, like the word for milk.
Dud, ayz, best class.
And what makes these rules even more tricky for my poor brain is that other words in the sentence, like adjectives or verbs, have to agree with the gender of the noun.
So if I want to ask whether you've drunk tea, I would say, whereas for coffee, it would be coffee.