Grammatical Gender

Just a thought towards the international speakers here, when you encounter a language in which words have different gender than your own, does it bother you at all? For example, say a "book" is feminine and in a different language it is masculine.

On the same note, do you find it odd at all when you encounter a language like English where there is essentially no gender?

Swedish used to have a gender structure for all nouns, but it fell into disuse a long time ago. I have only encountered it in French and I never really thought a lot about it. An inanimate object's gender is subjective enough that I don't care if a car is a he to one person and a she to another. Or la voiture versus le livre, if you get what I'm saying.

French is probably the only language which will hold onto their gendered nouns just because French is such a strictly policed language.

I usually keep getting it wrong at first, and learn not to copy the genders from Polish over time.
With English, it annoys me a bit with words like "friend" or "teacher". I'm just used to knowing the gender of whoever the other person is talking about and, even though I see no reason why I'd need that information, it just feels like something is missing.

French is probably the only language which will hold onto their gendered nouns just because French is such a strictly policed language.

I don't know, German might because so much of their grammar is structured around the gender system.

I usually keep getting it wrong at first, and learn not to copy the genders from Polish over time.
With English, it annoys me a bit with words like "friend" or "teacher". I'm just used to knowing the gender of whoever the other person is talking about and, even though I see no reason why I'd need that information, it just feels like something is missing.

This is me and grandparents in English. Swedish has words for the father and mother of a mother, and the father and mother of a father. There's never any confusion at all.

This is me and grandparents in English. Swedish has words for the father and mother of a mother, and the father and mother of a father. There's never any confusion at all.

Yeah, that would definitely irk me. Actually, even trying to imagine this kind of annoys me...

Often languages have different strictness towards grammar too. That's annoying.

For example, in German it would be more correct to say

Das Mädchen und sein Buch
(The Girl and her book) = literally 'the girl and its book' as any diminutive in German is a neuter noun.

Whereas in Dutch it's

Het meisje en haar boek
even though a 'het' word would normally take 'zijn', the physical gender overrides.

Were I to learn French it would probably be confusing. I already have 2 languages that somewhat randomly assign gender (German and Dutch; they normally correspond though) so a new one would be irritating. I never struggle in Russian and Bulgarian though as there are so few exceptions to the gender rules.

Quote from: PizzaPlanet on November 25, 2011, 04:45:34 PM

I usually keep getting it wrong at first, and learn not to copy the genders from Polish over time.
With English, it annoys me a bit with words like "friend" or "teacher". I'm just used to knowing the gender of whoever the other person is talking about and, even though I see no reason why I'd need that information, it just feels like something is missing.

This is me and grandparents in English. Swedish has words for the father and mother of a mother, and the father and mother of a father. There's never any confusion at all.

Maternal and paternal.  Ta-da, confusion gone.

Why not have separate words for it, though? It's not like you never mention your grandparents. Or don't you? Why do you never call, Roundy?

You're talking about a lot of languages here Wendy. Many languages get by without distinguishing them.

Hence, there is a lot of confusion when you're calling for dear old Nan in other countries. Swedish truly is the best language.

Swedish truly is the best language.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I can understand, though don't necessarily agree with, the problems people have with genders which actually relate to stuff with genders, but why do objects need a gender association? What purpose does it serve?

You can say the same about huge amounts of things in every language. There are other issues that affect keeping useless things in a language. If there weren't, we'd all just make the switch to Esperanto.

You can say the same about huge amounts of things in every language. There are other issues that affect keeping useless things in a language. If there weren't, we'd all just make the switch to Esperanto.

You mean those who aren't Asian would be speaking Esperanto. Esperanto is just as difficult to learn for asian speakers as any other European language since Esperanto is essentially based off them.

Has no grammatical genders, no irregular verbs, no irregular spelling,  no conjugation...

I used to be okay at spanish, working in a kitchen with a bunch of mexicans you pick it up fast.  But alas, it's all gone now.

Has no grammatical genders, no irregular verbs, no irregular spelling,  no conjugation...

Memorizing verbs and spelling is not what is hard for Asian speakers. It is the different cases, it is the different tenses, it is the adjectival agreement to name a few. None of these exist in many of the Asian languages.

Just because it is easier than some of the European languages, does not mean it is not still a difficult language for some groups.

It's just as difficult for anyone. The Europeans just have a slight head start, and some of us don't even have that. Finns, for example, would probably have equal problems to an east Asian, since their language is part of the Finno-Ugric group. Or I could be talking out of my ass and Esperanto could be based on that language group as well, but since you're talking about European languages I wouldn't think so.

It's just as difficult for anyone. The Europeans just have a slight head start, and some of us don't even have that. Finns, for example, would probably have equal problems to an east Asian, since their language is part of the Finno-Ugric group. Or I could be talking out of my ass and Esperanto could be based on that language group as well, but since you're talking about European languages I wouldn't think so.

I'm not familiar with Finno-Ugric languages, but I know that Esperanto borrows heavily from the Germanic, Romantic, and Greek languages.

The Fenno-Ugric languages are different, I think. The Germanic and Romantic languages have at least co-existed long enough to borrow heavily from each other, but the Fenno-Ugric languages seem completely different in structure and vocabulary.

Quote from: Eddy Baby on November 28, 2011, 02:48:21 PM

Has no grammatical genders, no irregular verbs, no irregular spelling,  no conjugation...

Memorizing verbs and spelling is not what is hard for Asian speakers. It is the different cases, it is the different tenses, it is the adjectival agreement to name a few. None of these exist in many of the Asian languages.

Just because it is easier than some of the European languages, does not mean it is not still a difficult language for some groups.

Yes. There are no cases and there is no agreement.

Quote from: EnglshGentleman on November 28, 2011, 06:40:23 PM

Quote from: Eddy Baby on November 28, 2011, 02:48:21 PM

Has no grammatical genders, no irregular verbs, no irregular spelling,  no conjugation...

Memorizing verbs and spelling is not what is hard for Asian speakers. It is the different cases, it is the different tenses, it is the adjectival agreement to name a few. None of these exist in many of the Asian languages.

Just because it is easier than some of the European languages, does not mean it is not still a difficult language for some groups.

Yes. There are no cases and there is no agreement.

Are you just talking out of your ass?

Adjectives agree with nouns. That is, they are plural if the nouns they modify are plural, and accusative if the nouns they modify are accusative.

Sorry about that. Everything else, however, is correct. My point is, nobody actually gives a fuck about whether a language is logical or not. Otherwise something would actually be done about it.

My point is, nobody actually gives a fuck about whether a language is logical or not. Otherwise something would actually be done about it.

Correction: Nobody actually gives a fuck whether or not English and some made-up languages (lol Esperanto) is logical or not, and it's pretty much impossible to do anything about it, since English doesn't have a centralised authority that would maintain it.

EDIT: An example of what I'm talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Language_Council
Granted, this would be difficult to implement, since there are many English-speaking countries which would not accept another country's judgement. However, a language council for a national dialect of English should be doable.

I hope the Polish Language Poobahs are better than the Académie française going around making laws like one cannot name one's store 'Le Drug Store' cause it might degrade the French language.  English is richer and more responsive because we Anglophones like it that way.  Some specialized uses of English are standardized, e.g. worldwide aviation, because clarity is a must but for the rest, it's free to go its own way (out of the classroom anyway.)

I hope the Polish Language Poobahs are better than the Académie française going around making laws like one cannot name one's store 'Le Drug Store' cause it might degrade the French language.  English is richer and more responsive because we Anglophones like it that way.  Some specialized uses of English are standardized, e.g. worldwide aviation, because clarity is a must but for the rest, it's free to go its own way (out of the classroom anyway.)

Ah, yes, I should have expected you to jump in with negativity, with all the hate for regulations and such.
Enjoy your people not differentiating between "your" and "you're", or "their", "they're" and "there" - because that makes English "richer" and "more responsive". Tee hee.

You've misrepresented my point.  An institutional authority is a bit different from personal judgment, don't you think?  Illiterate language is judged as such by the listener or the reader, not to mention the teacher, and not by some institutionalized word police.

Strawman or not, he has a point. The literacy level among native English speakers must be tied to the malleable nature of the language in some form or another, right?