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What's the point of gendered words in certain languages? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by TheDarkKnight to c/asklemmy

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I know a lot of languages have some aspects that probably seem a bit strange to non-native speakers…in the case of gendered words is there a point other than “just the way its always been” that explains it a bit better?

I don’t have gendered words in my native language, and from the outside looking in I’m not sure what gendered words actually provide in terms of context? Is there more to it that I’m not quite following?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess I didn't associate the English "man"/"woman“ with grammatical gender in the way that grammatical gender is often so arbitrary, like "wall" being female in Gernan. Thanks for the perspective.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Man/woman" are entirely separate nouns, I don't think they're even as closely related as one'd think. Different pronouns aren't the same thing, either.

Basically, this has nothing to do with gender as a social or biological phenomenon. It is just a property of a noun that has an unintuitive name. Similarly to how English arbitrarily decides that you can't say "swimmed" because "swim" is "not that kind of verb", German arbitrarily divides nouns into three classes.