311–320 of 377 posts
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Le port and la port.
Port is always masculine though, it only means port/harbour. But it's not that important, gender does add some redundancy and some error-correction to a language. It's not necessary (as shown by English) but it has some use.
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That's silly. Gendered nouns seem difficult to you, as an English speaker, because you speak a language that doesn't have them, and not because they're inherently harder than any other language feature.
As an ignorant English speaker who has learned enough German to get by, I wonder: - what utility do you think a language gains from gendered nouns? - (more immediate to my experience) how do you know what gender a noun is? I assume there are "themes" that might inform you. But if you're unclear, how do you do find out? Is there a social cost to getting it wrong? - how are new genders decided? I'm struggling to think…
> - what utility do you think a language gains from gendered nouns?
Not a whole lot, but a language doesn't gain much utility from English features like mandatory plural agreement or a/an distinction either. Even something like "his/her" and "he/she" distinction isn't necessarily and a lot of non-native speakers of English struggle with it. You can dream up some sentences that are clarified by the distinction, but in a different language you obviously just express the same idea differently.
Ultimately a committee sitting around asking if a feature has utility and should be added is not very close to the way languages actually form.
> how do you know what gender a noun is? I assume there are "themes" that might inform you. But if you're unclear, how do you do find out? Is there a social cost to getting it wrong?
Sure. If a Spanish word ends in a it's probably feminine unless it's of Greek origin. But there is also memorization involved. Getting the wrong gender on an inanimate object is a lot like any other non-native mistake; it's likely someone who is talking to you can figure out what you meant.
Again, having to just memorize some cases is common in languages. How do you know what preposition goes with which verb? It probably seems very natural to you, but there isn't much logical basis for a lot of them. In Spanish you dream "with" someone rather than "of" them. Someone who wants to speak native-sounding English has to spend a lot of time learning the right pairings (as well as stuff like which compound expressions should have the infinitive versus the gerund).
> - how are new genders decided? I'm struggling to think of an example as "laptop" presumably has the same gender as "computer", but it must come up sometimes.
It's not really like a group sits around deciding, but of course there's a lot of precedent with existing words that could inform you which answer is likely. Synonymous words can have different genders, so it's not really like, for instance, computing words are all masculine. In general if a totally new word is borrowed into Spanish it's more likely to be masculine (so, like, el kabuki, el ánime, etc.).
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My understanding is that proto-IndioEuropean had two genders: animate and inanimate which would have served a purpose. Later animate split into masculine/feminine. Some languages preserved all three, others dropped the inanimate (or it morphed into "neuter"). Much like English spelling it's all a mess now.
My native tongue is Lithuanian. There was never a inanimate/neuter gender and we got masculine/feminine ingrained deeply in the language. Some people say Lithuanian has kept most of proto-Indo European features. If that's true, inanimate/neuter had to evolve later than gender split.
For my part I'd say that it probably doesn't maintain them that much more than the huge number of other modern-day descendants of PIE.
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That's silly. Gendered nouns seem difficult to you, as an English speaker, because you speak a language that doesn't have them, and not because they're inherently harder than any other language feature.
Gendered nouns are incredibly difficult for non-native speakers (even if their native language contains gendered nouns) as they are completely arbitrary, just like the words themselves. So instead of remembering (word) a non-native now has to learn (gender, word) for every noun. It's not the concept that is difficult, it's the extra piece of information that makes it more difficult.
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I think a simple way of putting it (as a native non-bilingual English speaker) would be to think of it as "a" -> non-specific and "the" -> specific. Example: A basket is in the car -> some kind of basket of unknown shape or color. The basket is in the car -> a specific, known basket. HTH
Having a simple way to put it doesn't mean it's easy to do right. My native language don't have anything like articles. I frequently misuse a/the in borderline cases. Or just omit the article completely.. Yet gender is super easy in my language! Each noun has gendered suffix. Once you know the word, you know it's gender. Or once you know the gender, you know the suffix... :)
A == non-specific The == specific
'A dog' could be any old dog.
'The dog' is a specific dog we know.
Thus
A == any The == thing
Perhaps I'm not clear where with this understanding it would trip you up. Can you think of an example?
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I think a simple way of putting it (as a native non-bilingual English speaker) would be to think of it as "a" -> non-specific and "the" -> specific. Example: A basket is in the car -> some kind of basket of unknown shape or color. The basket is in the car -> a specific, known basket. HTH
My wife is Korean and often asks me questions and, while you aren't wrong, the rules are way more complicated than that.
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My wife is Korean and often asks me questions and, while you aren't wrong, the rules are way more complicated than that.
I'm trying to think of an example--do you have one by chance?
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Really ? As someone who speaks natively German, can you give me an example or a source for this ? ß is after a long vocal, ss is after a short vocal. I don't know any regional problems with that (and I come from a region with a VERY different language than most of the German speaking people)
BTW, the English word for Vokal is vowel , not vocal (which means something else).
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It gets worse in French: un livre (book), une livre (pound, in France equal to 0.5 kg). They're even pronounced the same.
Yes, yes, but this example is so well trod that it immediately popped into your mind, and, what's more, try to think of a sentence where you might honestly be confused about whether "pound" or "book" was meant.
French has quite a few words that break the apparent gender rules: un musée, un lycée, un mille (meaning "mile"; the homograph meaning "thousand" is feminine but usually doesn't take an article), le mort (dead person) vs. la mort (death), etc. All adding to the shit you gotta memorize. If you don't, your meaning will still come across but you'll sound "off".
(I don't even think I remember all my Vandertramp verbs...)
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Spanish would be a much better global language than English or French due to simple phonetics and overall consistency. Gendered nouns are really simple. I'd say the hardest part is the subjunctive case but it's not critical for communicating.
Yes, Spanish is mostly simple and consistent. It feels too verbose though. I think there are more (space or time) efficient languages.
Apparently the information density of most languages when spoken by native speakers is much the same, despite variations in verbosity.