Comment on Why do some languages use gendered nouns?
SquiffSquiff@lemmy.world 4 months agoAre you able to provide an example as to how greater complexity makes it easier
This is an off the cuff example. Yes you can rephrase to get around this. It’s just an example.
The chair and the table don’t go together because it’s made of wood. The chair and the table don’t go together because it(female)'s made of wood.
Since you ‘know’ tables get female articles and such, you know the speaker is talking about the table and not the chair.
German.
Gerwoman.
How do they make things easier? (Asking as a German).
It's a mouthful, but concise. (Telling as a non-german).
I agree that German is concise. I just don’t see what the gendered nouns are contributing to that quality.
Sometimes more specific (sometimes. Verbs carry some widely different meaning and depend on propositions to differentiate), but not always more concise. If you’ve done or compared German-English translations, you see the English is always shorter, both in word and—especially in—character counts. My experience has been usually about 20, up to 30, percent.
Deutsch ist total einfach. Weiß doch jeder.
try making a really simple language, and figure out that it gets really difficult to speak because you start confusing shit. excessive complexity isn’t good either but some complexity is needed, and gender gives some of that. I have nothing to back this up though
Hyperreality@kbin.social 4 months ago
Eg. you hear a word that sounds like another word, and can tell it's not that other word, because the other word has a different gender.