this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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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.

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[–] umbraroze 3 points 2 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 53 minutes ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Technically English is my third languge, but also simultaneously my most fluent.

In short, not confusing at all. Because in Chinese (any variation of Chinese) nouns are also not gendered.

Pronouns in Chinese are also not gendered

He = 他 (tā)

She = 他 (tā)

No confusion with pronouns either. My parents constantly say he when refering to a woman, or she when refering to a man, or mix them up while talking about the same person in the same conversation. No me tho, I never get confused. I learned English at like grade 2-3.

[–] Tkpro 0 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Nope. 她 isn't really used. 他 is the pronoun, even if its refering to women.

Like if you wrote 他 to refer to a woman in an essay on a test, it'd get marked as correct.

Edit: Although, on the internet, people commonly type "TA" instead of "他".

Edit 2: So clarification

他 refers to both men and women

她 can only be used to refer to women, and this is rarely used, except maybe in english class to teach about the english pronouns

它 refers to non humans, like animals or objects

all 3 are pronounce the same exact way (tā)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

in my language nouns aren't gensered either so it was pretty easy

[–] [email protected] 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Easy, no problems at all. English articles are what breaks my head.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer 6 points 11 hours ago

As the speaker of an English language me can tell you is not a difficult.

[–] JeremyHuntQW12 2 points 8 hours ago

...because its the articles which are not gendered, not the nouns.

[–] frankenswine 125 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 35 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 44 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 15 hours ago

It's sure nice not having to learn German. I'm a native.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 23 hours ago

Yeah I basically never thought about the gender of English nouns because there's very few reasons to

[–] Zombiepirate 12 points 23 hours ago

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!

[–] astanix 5 points 13 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 14 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

no, we just learn that "der", "die", "das", "den", "dem" all translate to "the"

[–] [email protected] 10 points 20 hours ago

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

[–] TankovayaDiviziya 20 points 21 hours ago

If you want to be more confused, you should know that some languages have gendered verbs.

[–] olafurp 11 points 19 hours ago

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

[–] Treczoks 17 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Tujio 16 points 22 hours ago (5 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

That's because Sean isn't an English word.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 hours ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (2 children)

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

[–] Zombiepirate 21 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 9 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 18 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Not at all, it makes it simpler, in many cases you don't even need it or is even simpler to convey the gender in other ways

[–] rtxn 16 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Try Finnish or Hungarian, even their pronouns are genderless.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

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).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] SquiffSquiff 4 points 16 hours ago

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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