Why do some languages use gendered nouns? It seems to just add more complexity for no benefit.

  • Skua@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Pretty sure that OP is referring to noun class systems. English doesn’t use one, but most other European languages do and English used to. Like German’s three equivalents to English’s “the”: der, die, and das, which German changes depending on the noun class (“grammatical gender”) of the noun in question regardless of its actual gender or whether it even has one

    • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same thing applies. For instance, you could say “I like drinking tea, but I’d rather drink beer, but “she” 's bad for you”.

      Granted, in this case it’s not at all necessary because you don’t even need a pronoun here to get the information but I’m not great at examples lol

    • MxM111@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The post above you talks about the same. In English, if you say “I see a door and a window. It is open”, it is not quite clear what “it” is. But if door is male gender and window is neutral gender, then it becomes clear that “it” refers to window in that sentence.