Not a problem at all for me.
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Not confusing at all, Spanish and English are very flexible languages
Not at all, we don't do gendered words. The fact that pronouns are gendered still baffles me.
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.
We actually do have a second person singular, "thou." We just transitioned out of using it because 'politeness'. Thou could useth the second person singular, but thou would soundeth quite archaic. (Think I conjugated that correctly.) You can still see it used in some religious texts in reference to God.
I believe it'd be thou wouldst sound [fair] or thou soundest [fair], in early modern English depending on the tense, but that's a great point.
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.
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.
I didn't even know masseuse was gendered, I've never heard anyone use masseur in the US.
Not a single word on that list would even ping on my radar if you said it near me, except for "Masseur." If you said "Masseur" near me, I would think "oh, fancy." -Native English speaker from SE USA
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.
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.
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
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
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.
in my language nouns aren't gensered either so it was pretty easy
Easy, no problems at all. English articles are what breaks my head.
Wow, really? "A, an, and the"? I'm curious how you get confused with those.
Because recognising when to use "a", "the", or 0 article is tricky.
A/an is usually fine. 0 article and the are tricky, and then getting it right on the fly is hard.
We take it all for granted and get it, but they're hard for people who don't have an equivalent in their first language.
As the speaker of an English language me can tell you is not a difficult.
...because its the articles which are not gendered, not the nouns.
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
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
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.
It's sure nice not having to learn German. I'm a native.
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.
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.
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.
As someone trying to learn Spanish I wish there was no gendering in Spanish. It makes the language significantly harder to learn.
no, we just learn that "der", "die", "das", "den", "dem" all translate to "the"
Took German and college and the reverse really sucked with those forms of the
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.
I find it fairly easy to learn but insanely difficult to master
Most of us who are native English speakers haven’t mastered it either, so you’re not alone
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.
If you want to be more confused, you should know that some languages have gendered verbs.
Not at all, it's easier that other gendered languages since object genders get shuffled up.
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
Non-gendered wording isn't exclusive to English. Asia exists.
I wasn't trying to imply otherwise.
Thanks for the insight!
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.
It still bugs me that Sean Bean's name doesn't rhyme.
That's because Sean isn't an English word.
Most English words aren't English words, which doesn't help.
So true. English is a bastard language, a bully in a trench coat stealing words from all the other languages. That’s what makes it so confusing to learn/read/use but also fun to use
You get used to it. The other way around is likely a lot harder, considering that a new concept is being introduced.
Try Finnish or Hungarian, even their pronouns are genderless.
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).