Spyke

People who speak English as a second language: how confusing is it that nouns are not gendered?

It's a rare example of English being simpler than other languages, so I'm curious if it's hard for a new speaker to keep the nouns straight without the extra clues.

View original on lemmy.world
lemmy.world

not at all. it simplifies the learning experience by quite a bunch.

one of the more confusing is learning other gendered languages where the gender of some object is different to the one in your mother tongue

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lemmy.ca

To make matters worse, some languages have the exact same word but with a different gender. Heat in Spanish is el calor but in Catalán is la calor

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superkretreply
feddit.org

To make matters even worse, in some languages the exact same word with different gender has different meaning.

In German:
"der Band", male, = a (book) volume
"das Band", neutral, = ribbon
"die Band", female = (music) band

Bonus: "die Bande" can be a gang, a sports barrier, and (relationship) ties.

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one of the more confusing is learning other gendered languages where the gender of some object is different to the one in your mother tongue

That's something I hadn't really considered. Interesting!

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Took German and college and the reverse really sucked with those forms of the

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lemmy.ca

Non-gendered wording isn't exclusive to English, it's mostly other European languages that stick to doing that.

There are some languages that don't even have different words for "he" and "she".

Edit: made the wording less asshole-y

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lemmy.world

Non-gendered wording isn't exclusive to English. Asia exists.

I wasn't trying to imply otherwise.

Thanks for the insight!

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lemmy.ml

Chinese is even cooler in that they don't need different, often irregular versions of the same word for tense and plural either.

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Alleroreply
lemmy.today

Hell yes

Just use one character and there you have your plural

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lemmy.ml

They lose out in that any time you refer to something that can be counted, you have an irregular counting word before it. Each word doesn't get its own counting word though, and there's a generic, ge you can always use if you have the vocabulary of a 3 year old, so it's not that bad, but it's still completely unnecessary memorization.

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Here I agree, it's an unnecessary pain, and the counting words are often super counter-intuitive

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Non-gendered wording isn't exclusive to English. Asia exists.

I mean to be fair those languages have other ways of determining which word does what other than sentence order and vibes if my knowledge of basic Chinese is correct.

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lemmy.world

The nouns still are gendered. Only the article is gender-neutral.

Tarzan is a man. He lives in the jungle.

Jane is a woman. She is visiting Africa.

The elephant is a non-named animal. It eats fruits and leaves.

If you really want to know a confusing issue about the English language, just look at the pronunciation of words. It is more or less rule-free, and all over the place. Don't believe me? Try to read the poem "The Chaos" aloud. Even most native speakers need several attempts.

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Tujioreply
lemmy.world

It still bugs me that Sean Bean's name doesn't rhyme.

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sik0fewlreply
lemmy.ca

Most English words aren't English words, which doesn't help.

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So true. English is a bastard language, a bully in a trench coat stealing words from all the other languages. That’s what makes it so confusing to learn/read/use but also fun to use

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OK, but ugro-finnic languages are incredibly harder compared to English, I would say even much harder than German (saying this as a basic Estonian speaker - which is similar to Finnish from what I can tell).

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sopuli.xyz

It’s not confusing at all, except in the very specific case of nouns referring to people or animals that don’t have gendered variants.

For example, in my language, the word corresponding to “(a) sheep” has a masculine and feminine form, with the feminine used neutrally. Consequently, when seeing “sheep” in English, I assume the feminine and seeing it used with “he” is a bit of cognitive dissonance.

Similarly, most words for human professions are by default masculine.

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I remember reading a story written in English, and it kept mentioning „the cook“ (no pronoun, no name). My gender biased brain assumed the cook must be male. So I got confused when the pronoun „she“ finally appeared. I had to reread the paragraph to understand what was going on.
Embarrassing and eye opening.

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Ive spent some times on farms and haven't ever herd/used he for a singular male sheep before.

If its a singular male I would say the ram.

But its just normally sheep, generally female. If you want to be specific its weathers, ewes, lambs or rams.

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lemmy.world

I'm a Finnish speaker. Nouns aren't gendered in Finnish either, so that's not weird.

Things that do trip me up:

  • Pronouns (lack of T/V distinction (i.e. just one "you") and gendered third person)
  • Articles (Finnish doesn't have articles as such, so adding them sometimes takes some brainpower)
  • so freaking many irregular verbs etc
  • seriously what is this orthography even (Finnish grammar may be complex, but the same can't be said of the pronunciation)

Actually, I'm learning French right now and gendered nouns aren't even that much of a problem. I was dreading the numerals more.

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Taniwha420reply
lemmy.world

We actually do have a second person singular, "thou." We just transitioned out of using it because 'politeness'. Thou could useth the second person singular, but thou would soundeth quite archaic. (Think I conjugated that correctly.) You can still see it used in some religious texts in reference to God.

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lemmy.world

I believe it'd be thou wouldst sound archaic or thou soundest [most] archaic, in early modern English depending on the tense, but that's a great point.

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Taniwha420reply
lemmy.world

I think you're right. I didn't think the "helper words" in the conditional should get conjugated, but I grabbed a Book of Common Prayer off the shelf and there's a bunch of "thou shalt" + infinitive, so evidently the conditional does get conjugated (in addition to "thou didst" and "thou hast".) Pretty sure I noticed some 2nd person weak verbs that looked like they had the same conjugation as the 3rd person (eg "Remember thou keep holy ...") I did note "he cometh", so maybe that -eth ending is actually an older conjugation for the 3rd person that later morphed into an -s ending? Just noticed "he saith (says)", and the confirmed -eth ending on a bunch of 3rd person congregations. Interestingly, I found a LOT of "thou shalt", some "thou wilt", but no "thou couldst" or "thou wouldst". Probably because the BCP is all like, "you WILL, this is not an option, sinner."

I don't know though! I'm a typical English first language speaker and I'm just going with what feels right and using my understanding of grammar from my French education.

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It does get confusing! I'm kind of a Shakespeare nerd, and the cult I was in till I was a young adult was big on the King James Version of the bible, so I guess I've just had a lot of exposure. I don't really know the rules.

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Not at all, it's easier that other gendered languages since object genders get shuffled up.

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sopuli.xyz

Not.

English is a very straigh forward to learn language.

Now, an English native speaker learning a gender declining language... oh, how fun to watch.

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jlai.lu

I find it fairly easy to learn but insanely difficult to master

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I speak my native language for a couple of decades now and the more I speak it, the more I realize I don't master it.

I can read, write and hold a conversation in English. But if asked, I will say I can get by but very far from even the lowest level of mastery.

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You get used to it. The other way around is likely a lot harder, considering that a new concept is being introduced.

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Can confirm. English is my first language and I took German in high school; it was basically just memorization for which words get which.

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scbasteve7reply
lemmynsfw.com

Wow, really? "A, an, and the"? I'm curious how you get confused with those.

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Because recognising when to use "a", "the", or 0 article is tricky.

A/an is usually fine. 0 article and the are tricky, and then getting it right on the fly is hard.

We take it all for granted and get it, but they're hard for people who don't have an equivalent in their first language.

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Tkproreply
lemmy.world

What? She in Chinese is 她. It might not be used often but it definitely is gendered....

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hmm, idk man, over here 他 is only for men, and 她 is only for women.

though in speaking we just use 佢 because canto

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Slavic native speaker here.
Not at all. Much simpler, in contrast with German.

There are few gendered nouns, like a spoke(man/woman/person), act(or/ress), etc.

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These are on the decline these days in favour of gender neutral terms, e.g.

  • Chair/chairperson
  • Spokesperson
  • Actor
  • Firefighter
  • Police officer
  • Paramedic
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lemmy.zip

Swedish has genders, but not male/female but utrum/neutrum.

These are not really rule bound, and has to be learned word by word.

Some words are even double gendered but means different things depending on what gender is used.

Example

"En borr" / "borren" = a drill / the drill

"Ett borr" / "borret" = a drill bit / the drill bit.

But to answer your question, English is in many ways simpler than Swedish, you can specify any article by just putting "the" in front of it. In Swedish you need to select the proper -en/-et suffix with no real hard snd fast rule.

Where english is annoying is compound words.

"Realisationsvinstbeskattning" is the longest word in the Swedish dictionary, it is made up of three separate words,

Realisation - Sale

Vinst - Revenue

Beskattning - taxation

So the word simply means taxation on sale revenue.

According to Guinness book of world records the longest Swedish from 2006 the longest Swedish word is:

nordvästersjökustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranläggningsmaterielunderhållsuppföljningssystemdiskussionsinläggsförberedelsearbeten

But that is just ridiculous and looks like it comes from a report for the military where someone made the word because they could and enjoyed languages.

Lets break it down into individual words

nord-väster-sjö-kust-artilleri-flyg-spanings-simulator-anläggnings-materiel-underhålls-uppföljnings-system-diskussions-inläggs-förberedelse-arbeten

I am on mobile and the word would take too long to translate here, but it means

"Preparatory groundwork for the discussion on maintenance systems for materials used in the coastal artillery's flight reconnaissance simulator covering the north western costal sector."

The issue with English for a Swedish speaker is the lack of compound words, making Swedes used to separating compound words when writing. Which can have fun results:

Herrskjorta = mens button down shirts

Herr skjorta = Mr. Skjorta

Kassapersonal = Cashier

Kassa personal = terrible staff members

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I am learning a lot here. I am also Swedish lol. I was however great with the English classes, easily top 3 (okay honestly though I am being humble, I was really dominating those classes up until high school, so hard I dont even remember anyone even being in second or third place)

It sounds obnoxius but its true, if you also had a negative reaction to my story like myself, please find relief in that it was my peak and that I am single since years with heavy substance abuse going on the daily - also let me delete this in a bit okay bye lol

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Arabic speaker here and now that you mention it, the way sentences can get very long without a way to tell what the fourth "it" in the sentence refers to can be a bit of a pain, as is having to reword said sentences when writing to avoid ambiguity, but what you're thinking of there is declensions more than gendered nouns themselves. I mean gender doesn't hurt to have but it's the fact that in other European languages words change shape depending on their role in the sentence that's making the difference here.

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Mandarin truly has the best grammar. There are a few weird things, but in general it's very simple and elegant.

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feddit.org

I find the lack of capitalisation to be worse honestly. A lot of sentences where it is not clear at first whether something is a noun or not

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Capitalisation also makes skimming texts so much easier and faster since you can just jump from noun to noun until you find something relevant. I wish more languages would do it.

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sh.itjust.works

There used to be Doctor/Doctrix, actor/actress, etc but it has gone by the by in the last few decades. There’s still dog/bitch, ram/ewe, cow/bull etc.

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sudneoreply
lemm.ee

I still use actress, does that make me sound weird? Same for masseuse/masseur, waiter/waitress, hostess/steward (on a plane) and I can't think of anything else right now.

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Not a single word on that list would even ping on my radar if you said it near me, except for "Masseur." If you said "Masseur" near me, I would think "oh, fancy." -Native English speaker from SE USA

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Weird? Certainly not. To me it makes very little difference - although I understand the idea behind eliminating the male/female dichotomy. Stick with whatever you’re used to. As long as I understand what you say I don’t lose sleep over the words used. One more for the list: prostitute / gigalo.

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I didn't even know masseuse was gendered, I've never heard anyone use masseur in the US.

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As someone trying to learn Spanish I wish there was no gendering in Spanish. It makes the language significantly harder to learn.

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English is missing quite a few grammatical features that are necessary for understanding of a German sentence. The genderedness (lolwat is that a word?) nouns helps recognise references, as does declination declension of nouns. German (as presumably other languages do) also uses a LOT more commas than English to structure sentences. So if you know what to look for, it can be very easy to parse even a complicated German sentence because everything has a signal attached telling you what it's doing in that sentence.

Obviously language can work perfectly fine without those features or English wouldn't exist. Still, there are frequently sentences in English that would have to be reworded quite heavily to lose their ambiguity, such as when there are several "it"s referenced and you have to take half a second to figure out which one is which. That's when I do sometimes miss my native language's features - but it's also when native English speakers struggle.

Edit: declination vs declension. Go away, I just woke up lol

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About as confusing as some people being nongendered. You get used to it pretty quickly, and it becomes a non-issue.

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For the most part I don't think about it at all. I guess you only consider things when they cause extra effort, in this case it mostly doesn't so it's very unconscious. That said, I generally use the few gendered ones I know (I listed in another comment) because it is the way my native language works.

By the way, from grammar perspective English is a very simple language. Compared to similar languages (French, Italian etc.), for example, verbs are much simpler too. The harder part of English I think has to do with pronounce.

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Not all other languages have gendered nouns. Articles and affixes are usual points of pain I see (as someone who grew up in a monolingual English-speaking household), and of course the whole orthography mess with spelling is terrible (how can ough have like 6 or 8 pronounciations?!). If you want fun, some languages have distinctions between inanimate and animate things as well as cases that don't exist in English as well if you want to look in fun other features.

Edit: I meant to say prepositions. Affixes is often more in the other direction

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lemmy.world

Eh, gendered nouns are just an old holdover. At least English (usually) uses words to improve specificity. For example, "Pick up my medicine" as opposed to "pick up medicine." It seems redundant to some until suddenly you need to specify after the fact.

The more precise the language the fewer chances of miscommunication. A perfect language would be precise and unambiguous without deliberate effort (as opposed to laziness, slang, shorthand, etc.) which is probably completely impossible to craft, much less about.

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Windex007reply
lemmy.world

I disagree that being perfectly unambiguous is a feature of a "perfect" language.

Ambiguity creates holes for us to fill, and some people don't realize how good it feels to fill those holes.

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Out of German and English, I always found German to be better suited for factual texts (scientific papers and essays, news textbooks, encyclopedias etc.) because it's less ambiguous and English for more creative writing (novels, poems, opinion pieces, speeches etc.) because there is more scope for the imagination and the ambiguity leaves more room for double entendres, puns and other fun stuff. There are advantages to both.

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I think it's just that one point where you have to accept things like that exist. Sometimes gendering slips out of your mind, but a lot of people let it slide.

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lemmy.today

It was weird in the very beginning, but it's good and I love it!

Absolutely worth getting used to, way less headaches

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It's not, why would that even be a good thing? Get rid of adding identifies to objects like a 6yo.

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