What are the point of masculine, feminine and neutral in languages?

Dots1982 · 07-11-2018 10:00PM #1

Thankfully in English we don’t waste time with it but the amount of languages that use Genders and I can’t see any point or help having them and the amount of complication it causes is ridiculous.

Anyone agree or disagree?

The Tetrarch · 07-11-2018 10:04PM

You won't pass your exam with that attitude.

Fr_Dougal · 07-11-2018 10:09PM

I wish people would feck off with all this gender bullshit.

Charmeleon · 07-11-2018 10:10PM

We do, just less formal in use. You wouldn’t say ‘he’s a beautiful boat’.

07-11-2018 10:13PM

Dots1982 wrote: »

Thankfully in English we don’t waste time with it but the amount of languages that use Genders and I can’t see any point or help having them and the amount of complication it causes is ridiculous.

Anyone agree or disagree?

It was clearly orchestrated to rile you up.

endacl · 07-11-2018 10:14PM

I identify as grammatical.

07-11-2018 10:14PM

Charmeleon wrote: »

We do, just less formal in use. You wouldn’t say ‘he’s a beautiful boat’.

Every single noun in German has a gender. It's really not the same.

Charmeleon · 07-11-2018 10:17PM

Luna Wooden Nitpicker wrote: »

Every single noun in German has a gender. It's really not the same.

The original post says we don’t bother with it in English which isn’t correct.

LeinsterDub · 07-11-2018 10:18PM

Dots1982 wrote: »

Thankfully in English we don’t waste time with it but the amount of languages that use Genders and I can’t see any point or help having them and the amount of complication it causes is ridiculous.

Anyone agree or disagree?

English used to have genders but they fell out of use. Genders in language are pretty pointless alright.

07-11-2018 10:22PM

Charmeleon wrote: »

The original post says we don’t bother with it in English which isn’t correct.

What is the gendered version of 'a' or 'the' in English?

Dots1982 · 07-11-2018 10:25PM

The Tetrarch wrote: »

You won't pass your exam with that attitude.

No exams just learning to speak a language but telling the teacher to ignore the grammar because all I want to do is communicate and be understood.

Grayson · 07-11-2018 10:30PM

we stick "an" in front of a word that starts with a vowel. An Apple, An orange, a banana. Isn't that similar?

07-11-2018 10:33PM

Dots1982 wrote: »

No exams just learning to speak a language but telling the teacher to ignore the grammar because all I want to do is communicate and be understood.

Which is the whole point of grammar

07-11-2018 10:37PM

Dots1982 wrote: »

No exams just learning to speak a language but telling the teacher to ignore the grammar because all I want to do is communicate and be understood.

Grammar is the structural foundation of language.

Charmeleon · 07-11-2018 10:38PM

Luna Wooden Nitpicker wrote: »

What is the gendered version of 'a' or 'the' in English?

See my previous post. We still retain gendered and neutral aspects of language in English. To say it is absent is not correct. We wouldn’t say ‘she is a wonderful pizza’ but we would say ‘she sure is a fine AK-47’.

Charmeleon · 07-11-2018 10:40PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Grammar is the structural foundation of language.

What they are trying to say is that having to learn and understand the grammatical rules explicitly is not required to speak the language as that is an innate human faculty.

07-11-2018 10:45PM

Charmeleon wrote: »

What they are trying to say is that having to learn and understand the grammatical rules explicitly is not required to speak the language as that is an innate human faculty.

Perhaps, if you are a native speaker. Without the building blocks of grammar, I would find it considerably more difficult to learn French or Italian.

07-11-2018 10:53PM

I was in a language class once and one of the lads was complaining about learning grammar. "we don't have grammar in our language! We just say what sounds right"
Oh dear

Franz Von Peppercorn · 07-11-2018 10:53PM

Grayson wrote: »

we stick "an" in front of a word that starts with a vowel. An Apple, An orange, a banana. Isn't that similar?

I’ll go with not similar at all.

Dots1982 · 07-11-2018 10:54PM

I’m learning polish and the grammar is impossible. It helps no understanding and is completely pointless and all polish people say don’t bother trying to learn it as they never bothered to learn it, they just kind of learnt automatically.

But more widely I never got the point of it with German either.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 07-11-2018 10:55PM

Charmeleon wrote: »

See my previous post. We still retain gendered and neutral aspects of language in English. To say it is absent is not correct. We wouldn’t say ‘she is a wonderful pizza’ but we would say ‘she sure is a fine AK-47’.

That’s all very informal and can be replaced with neutral terms. It.

Clearly any existing gender terms in English are residual.

07-11-2018 10:57PM

Dots1982 wrote: »

I’m learning polish and the grammar is impossible. It helps no understanding and is completely pointless and all polish people say don’t bother trying to learn it as they never bothered to learn it, they just kind of learnt automatically.

But more widely I never got the point of it with German either.

As they spoke Polish from the cradle, which is advantageous.

Charmeleon · 07-11-2018 10:57PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Perhaps, if you are a native speaker. Without the building blocks of grammar, I would find it considerably more difficult to learn French or Italian.

Absolutely, the short window of opportunity during early childhood when you acquire language and adopt the grammatical rules means you usually have to translate explicitly in thought any grammatical differences, as well as when you learn to write for an anonymous audience whose knowledge and perspective you can’t know in advance.

All the same, we’ve had native languages for tens of thousands of years without learning any explicit grammatical rules.

Dj Stiggie · 07-11-2018 11:01PM

Dots1982 wrote: »

No exams just learning to speak a language but telling the teacher to ignore the grammar because all I want to do is communicate and be understood.

Good luck with that. The second you walk into the airport terminal and try to communicate with someone, they'll look at you like you have ten heads.

Your classmates will be forgiving of your mistakes because you're all learning at the same level, but try talking to a native speaker who's rarely heard a foreigner making a lot of mistakes trying to get by and they'll probably apologise and walk off or switch to English.

Day Lewin · 07-11-2018 11:07PM

They are nothing to do with "genders" in the sexual sense: they're just groups of words that behave a certain way.
Such as, how a plural is formed, etc. and how that affects other words such as descriptors.
You might just as well call them reds, blues, yellows. Or Bobbly, Bumbum and Brill.

Learning a language, it would be very hard work to learn each word and all its associations in isolation, one by one: that's why some wise grammarian has grouped the like together for your convenience.

There's not much gender left in English, but there's a ton of auxiliary verbs.

Charmeleon · 07-11-2018 11:08PM

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

That’s all very informal and can be replaced with neutral terms. It.

Clearly any existing gender terms in English are residual.

I don’t think it’s quite that arbitrary and flippant though, we also use gendered language to imply closeness or appreciation and particularly when the subject has an emotional connection. A patriot would say something like “Ireland will only be free when she is emancipated from foreign rule”, poets often seem to use gendered language for the same effect.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 07-11-2018 11:17PM

Charmeleon wrote: »

I don’t think it’s quite that arbitrary and flippant though, we also use gendered language to imply closeness or appreciation and particularly when the subject has an emotional connection. A patriot would say something like “Ireland will only be free when she is emancipated from foreign rule”, poets often seem to use gendered language for the same effect.

Someone learning the language doesn’t need that though. You can get away with gender neutral in all these cases. It for the car, boat and country.

(Unless they aspire to be poets I suppose.)

Spelling is hard in English though. Totally inconsistent.

You said earlier than native speakers don’t learn grammar when young. Sure it’s not deliberately taught but the brain has a inate grammatical understanding. As children pick up language they pick up grammar and tenses based on other words that they have heard. No child has ever heard goed as the past tense of go, but they instinctively add that ‘ed because they heard it used elsewhere.

Ficheall · 07-11-2018 11:43PM

bluewolf wrote: »

Which is the whole point of grammar

I've been racking my brains trying to think of an example where replacing le with la in French could possibly lead to any actual confusion, and I'm coming up short. Perhaps it avoids some confusion if there are ambiguous pronouns in a sentence, but such examples could still be contrived even with the different genders.

In German, I'm not convinced that, say, "die" for plural the and feminine singular the avoids much confusion either. ("sie" just seems obtusely bad.) I guess "der See" and "das See" for "the sea" and "the lake" could affect your fishing prospects...

I don't know much about other languages. My Irish is good enough that I could get by in any spoken non-specialised discussion, but I have zero idea which nouns are feminine and which are masculine.

I guess maybe it could be viewed as a handy way to "remember" which grammatical rules apply to which words; eg. we do X with this group in the accusative case and Y with this other group in the accusative case, so here are the two rules to remember, and let's say group X are "male" and Y are "female" to help you remember.... But I certainly couldn't fault the OP for feeling that the genders create an awful lot of extra work for little reward.

Sonics2k · 07-11-2018 11:43PM

bluewolf wrote: »

I was in a language class once and one of the lads was complaining about learning grammar. "we don't have grammar in our language! We just say what sounds right"
Oh dear

"Let's eat grandpa."
"Let's eat, grandpa."

07-11-2018 11:45PM

Charmeleon wrote: »

See my previous post. We still retain gendered and neutral aspects of language in English. To say it is absent is not correct. We wouldn’t say ‘she is a wonderful pizza’ but we would say ‘she sure is a fine AK-47’.

So there's none. Good stuff.

Charmeleon · 07-11-2018 11:47PM

Luna Wooden Nitpicker wrote: »

So there's none. Good stuff.

Who claimed there were?

What are the point of masculine, feminine and neutral in languages?

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