Why do languages have genders? Impossible to learn!

[anotherlife]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

 

[The Great Goose]

so they don't have that in other languages?

 

[Fenton Lum]

so they don't have that in other languages?

How should we refer to you these days love?

 

[AnCap'n_Murica]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

Never learned a romance language, have you?

 

[Pogo]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

It's more a phonological thing than anything having to do with a concept of "gender" as in "sex". In other words it's a question of how the sound of the noun flows, not what it literally means. For example if you're speaking German and you refer to a "girl", obviously the concept gets no more feminine than that, yet the term is das Mädchen -- neuter. Not because a girl is "neuter", just because within the language "das" was deemed to flow best with "Mädchen", sonically.

Lucy Hamilton -- check me on this.

Did girls use to speak a different English from guys?
-- in some languages it changes according to the (sexual) gender of the speaker, or in other instances of the person addressed. For instance in Arabic a man would say to a woman "ana ahebek" (I love you) but a woman would say to a man "ani ahebek". In Portuguese a man says "obrigado" (thank you) but a woman says "obrigada". It's nuance pointing to who speaks to who and what the compexities of meaning are.

Fatter o' mact, being a descendant of German, English used to have genders like German as well. That fell out of favor in the Middle English period starting about a thousand years ago.

 

[The Great Goose]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

It's more a phonological thing than anything having to do with a concept of "gender" as in "sex". In other words it's a question of how the sound of the noun flows, not what it literally means. For example if you're speaking German and you refer to a "girl", obviously the concept gets no more feminine than that, yet the term is das Mädchen -- neuter. Not because a girl is "neuter", just because within the language "das" was deemed to flow best with "Mädchen", sonically.

Lucy Hamilton -- check me on this.

Did girls use to speak a different English from guys?
-- in some languages it changes according to the (sexual) gender of the speaker, or in other instances of the person addressed. For instance in Arabic a man would say to a woman "ana ahebek" (I love you) but a woman would say to a man "ani ahebek". In Portuguese a man says "obrigado" (thank you) but a woman says "obrigada". It's nuance pointing to who speaks to who and what the compexities of meaning are.

people like distinctions.

 

[Pogo]

Possibly more intriguing from a psycho standpoint is why certain USMB posters, when they're losing a political argument, counter by referring to me as "she".

 

[irosie91]

so they don't have that in other languages?

yes----they do

 

[irosie91]

Possibly more intriguing from a psycho standpoint is why certain USMB posters, when they're losing a political argument, counter by referring to me as "she".

I don't remember that you ever specified your gender-----the name POGO is not a clue

 

[Pogo]

As far as "impossible to learn" -- not really. You just learn the noun WITH its article. You don't learn the word "voiture"; you learn it as "le voiture". After a certain level of use it becomes simple second nature, so that uttering "la voiture" would sound weird. Speaking and hearing and reading it over and over ingrains patterns like anything else. If you're not hearing/reading it enough times to do that, then you're not dabbling in that language anyway.

 

[Pogo]

Possibly more intriguing from a psycho standpoint is why certain USMB posters, when they're losing a political argument, counter by referring to me as "she".

I don't remember that you ever specified your gender-----the name POGO is not a clue

Pogo -- the cartoon character, my namesake -- is male. Why would I take the identity of a gender opposite my own?
What do I look like -- Jeremiah?

And by the way it's "Pogo" not POGO. It's not an acronym.

More to the point, the obviously misogynistic wankers who practice this, already know better. They actually think "female" is some kind of insult, which says far more about them than about me.

 

[irosie91]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

It's more a phonological thing than anything having to do with a concept of "gender" as in "sex". In other words it's a question of how the sound of the noun flows, not what it literally means. For example if you're speaking German and you refer to a "girl", obviously the concept gets no more feminine than that, yet the term is das Mädchen -- neuter. Not because a girl is "neuter", just because within the language "das" was deemed to flow best with "Mädchen", sonically.

Lucy Hamilton -- check me on this.

Did girls use to speak a different English from guys?
-- in some languages it changes according to the (sexual) gender of the speaker, or in other instances of the person addressed. For instance in Arabic a man would say to a woman "ana ahebek" (I love you) but a woman would say to a man "ani ahebek". In Portuguese a man says "obrigado" (thank you) but a woman says "obrigada". It's nuance pointing to who speaks to who and what the compexities of meaning are.

Fatter o' mact, being a descendant of German, English used to have genders like German as well. That fell out of favor in the Middle English period starting about a thousand years ago.

Pogo----in german------a child has no gender grammatically----
DAS KIND In English----the "reason" usually supplied
for not calling a child IT as is grammatically correct---is that doing so would insult Parents (????) really---so I have been
told--------DO NOT CALL A BABY "IT" (as is grammatically correct in English-----it's better to say "she" if the sex is not
specified) (really---not kiddin' IT <<< is correct grammar----as grammar goes) It all started with the first word
MA. moving on to mama, or ama or ima. In Hebrew
PAIRED body parts are of the female gender ---grammatically.
ears is female. nose is male. hands is female---(sorta--with some irregularity) Freud has reasons why TWO is female and ONE and THREE is male. and FOUR is female----in dreams---------I cannot explain the logic of his logic or the logic
of GRAMMAR -----but babies do tend to PICK it up if spoken to using correct grammar-------they GENERALIZE the rules all on their little own

 

[Pogo]

Pogo----in german------a child has no gender grammatically----
DAS KIND In English-

Actually 'das Kind" is German, but we do the same thing in English-- "baby" is nonspecific, refers to boy-baby or girl-baby equally, so "it" is logical, also because by definition it isn't old enough to have taken on gender characteristics (indeed, if it were, the cooing passerby would not have to ask "is it a boy or a girl?". So "it" is logical whether it's related to the actual gender or simply the sonic flow. Same with "child".

It's a delightful callback to our German roots that we keep the everyday word kindergarten (Kinder - children; Garten - garden) fully intact in original spelling, when we could have invented one. It's the only word I can think of that retains the Germanic -en plural ending other than oxen and brethren.

I'll go way out on a limb here and suggest that possibly the reason "das Mädchen" (neuter) came to be preferred over "die Mädchen" (which would be the feminine form) is that 'das' just sounds more definite, with the S liaisoning to the M, rather than a vowel hanging in the air. That calls attention in the moment to the word that follows, which in itself makes the concept clear of a "girl" -- so in a way it could in fact be a way of highlighting her feminine trait. But that's just stream-of-consciousness speculation on my part.

DO NOT CALL A BABY "IT" (as is grammatically correct in English-----it's better to say "she" if the sex is not specified)

Never heard that one.
I guess you'd have a 51% chance of getting it right but that doesn't seem like great odds when you have a neuter available.

Now some people automatically refer to a dog of unknown gender as "he" and a cat as "she". Maybe that's related. It's realiy anthropomorphic projection.

 

[Pogo]

By the way OP -- what language(s) are you trying to learn?

 

[Meathead]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

You don't know how easy you've got it in English. Most other languages have mas. fem. and neu. nouns which decline according to case. Prague, the city in which I live can be Praha, Prahy, Praze, Prazkeho, Prahu and Prazske. Czech has another beauty in which verbs in the past conjugate thusly: Byt (inf.=to be) byl, byla, bylo and I'm not even going to go into plural forms because I get confused.

 

[Pogo]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

You don't know how easy you've got it in English. Most other languages have mas. fem. and neu. nouns which decline according to case. Prague, the city in which I live can be Praha, Prahy, Praze, Prazkeho, Prahu and Prazske.

Or he could go learn Finnish, with its fifteen case endings and unrelated to any Indo-European language.

 

[irosie91]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

You don't know how easy you've got it in English. Most other languages have mas. fem. and neu. nouns which decline according to case. Prague, the city in which I live can be Praha, Prahy, Praze, Prazkeho, Prahu and Prazske.

yeah-----that's why DAS GOLEM was born in Prague

 

[OldLady]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

Well English is sure easier than Spanish, in which all the nouns are either male or female and have to match the proper article.

 

[irosie91]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

Well English is sure easier than Spanish, in which all the nouns are either male or female and have to match the proper article.

Spanish is easier. The grammar is more consistent and the
SPELLING------is very easy

 

[Meathead]

In English,there is a pronoun like "he" but also a "she". Then there is "his" and "hers". And so on. Why is this extra complexity? Did girls use to speak a different English from guys? Also, other languages have neutral genders, to increment the gender count to three. Is that because half of the speakers were slaves and eunuchs? What is the big idea for this stupid language grammar gender thing in all Indo European languages?

Well English is sure easier than Spanish, in which all the nouns are either male or female and have to match the proper article.

Spanish is easier. The grammar is more consistent and the
SPELLING------is very easy

Yeah, Spanish is easy.