this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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As hetero women we will often refer to friends who are girls as girlfriends. You could be right, but the 7 here is what I just described.
English is weird with that. Other languages have a separate word for friend and for partner
English doesn't even have a word for person who you are engaged to be married to. Luckily French had two, so they shared.
I mean, English is just a collection of loanwords pasted haphazardly onto a bastardization skeleton of Germanic and romance languages.
Not German. But it's usually differentiated by the use of possessive or no possessive.
Mein Freundin = Partner
Eine Freundin = Friend
English is usually the same though.
My girlfriend = Partner
One of my girlfriends / a girlfriend = Friend