Have often wondered, do native speakers

[watcherintherye]

of languages with gendered nouns ever not know which definite or indefinite article to use? Or is it just innate?

Well, they don't know as children. You hear parents correcting gender, tenses/moods and so forth all the time.

With practise, adults learn unwritten rules that give a clue to the grammar, much as we learn things like adjective order. Regarding the gender of nouns, you're unlikely to encounter a new one without its gender.

I speak a language with something a bit like gender and children use context where they can (e.g. how other people have referred to the thing/person) just like we do in English (if someone refers to a colleague I haven't met as he/she I will know how to go on, if they just say "Chris popped in for some advice" I'll probably use "they").

Children also tend to miss out bits of words or shorter words so maybe while they are learning how to "do" gender they just don't bother with the adjectives/articles.

Oh also one of the things I noticed was that for a new word borrowed from another language people would use it as if it was a native language word - so supposed we're talking about a language where a word ending in -e is usually feminine and the borrowed word is "anime" and you are talking about a male anime character but nobody told you that yet, the borrowed word would probably be used as feminine to start with.
I've seen this done with words where the sounds make it more likely to be plural in the language I speak, but it's really a singular noun, only native speakers turn it into a plural and make a fake singular.

Thank you both for your interesting replies! I always think how much easier it is not to have to worry about gender, but I’m sure English has plenty of other traps for those learning it!

I learnt it together with learning the word. I did make these mistakes occasionally up until the age of 8 or 9 I believe. You hear the correct combination every day and people correct you (when you're still a child) when you're wrong.

seems like a huge amount of effort, and adds nothing to communication. I wonder why other languages dont just drop the gendering like English did

In my native tongue children naturally pick it up from infancy; maybe it’s an easy language (Eastern European).

I imagine, like English, you grow up knowing what sounds right and what doesn't without actually understanding why. Like we all know its a big red tractor not a red big tractor.

It's more effort for speakers but it makes things clearer for listeners. It's a trade-off.

Yes - you just learn what sounds right. And then learn to spell it correctly later on. Like we do in English with all our weird spellings. French for example, might have Le/La but everything mostly sticks to phonetic rules.

It's a bit like learning plurals in English. Some adults say mouses by mistake but most people pick up that it's mice very early on, and it tends to be linked to education level. It's easy to make a guess at new words, but the odd one will still throw you, like octopuses

Native German speaker. Normally we know, just as described by pp. However some nouns have regional variations - butter is generally feminine but masculine in Bavaria. Also, people do get things wrong in families on occasion. My mum for some reason has always feminized yogurt - it should be masculine according to the dictionary.

My husband and toddler daughter speak a language where the verb forms are different depending on whether the speaker is male or female. Because she only hears my husband speak it, she uses the male form unless corrected.

For some reason, a lot of French speakers didn’t know the gender of ‘aspirine’. It was in a quiz in a magazine with a few other obscure points of grammar.