I prefer dealing with complicated but ultimately rule-based stuff like は/が over the utter nonsense that is grammatical gender (and I’m German).
Edit: and because I see heated discussion about it elsewhere: grammatical gender is a very convenient thing to have and I wouldn’t abolish it.
What’s convenient about it? I genuinely see no benefits, as a native speaker of a gendered language.
Take this example:
“Bob took his hat out of the bag and dropped it.” What did he drop?
“Bob nahm seinen Hut aus der Tasche und ließ sie fallen.” “Bob took his male hat out of the female bag and dropped her.” Ah, he dropped the bag!
There’s better examples, I’m sure, but having gendered pronouns makes references clearer than everything just being “it”. It’s a way to structure sentences that may not be vital to understanding (because obviously there are languages that work perfectly fine without it) but makes it easier. Like capitalising nouns or clear rules for where to put commas can make reading easier.
That only works if they have different genders. Which is often not the case in most gendered languages.
“Bob sacó su manzana de la caja y la dejó caer.”
Bob took his female apple out of his female box and let it (female) fall
Also from my experience growing and going to school in a gender language (not Spanish btw), grammar classes are way more intense and thorough than for something like English. Most people don’t really have grammar classes in English speaking countries, while I studied it until the last year of high school…
More complex grammar certainly makes it more difficult to learn, even for native speakers.
Wow, nice, danke.
But I honestly don’t think the effort/price is worth it. You can make unambiguous references if required.
That’s the thing, it’s only an effort if you’re actively learning the language. Natives think about the gender of nouns only in certain, rare edge-cases that are ill-defined, like loanwords or “artificial” words (Nutella is gender-fluid). It would make more sense to just define those edge-cases than to try to get rid of gendered nouns.
Also wenn ich mich umsehe wie falsch das heute genutzt wird habe ich dich ernste Zweifel am Nutzen gerade wenn es auf Englisch so einfach ohne geht 😁
I understand all of these languages.
but I also never have sex.
life is full of trade-offs.
Yeah but I have you tagged as manosphere, so that is probably a you problem.
oh and how do you label yourself then?
I have them tagged as judgmental lmao
Where are all these labels coming from? I don’t even see an option to tag individual users across the platform with labels.
Edit: Typed that all out, then hit the settings button, and what do you know, it’s right there.
How do I unlearn languages?
I know Hungarian, English, and a very little Japanese. I feel really lonely.
You need to reach like 6 or 7 language before you can experience fifo overflow
I don’t know about Russian but at least Croatian which is also a Slavic language confuses the hell out of me (and I’m German)
Cases are what kill you in Slavic languages. Articles are a breeze though 😉
Russian has 6 cases. two more than german.
the added ones are instrumental and prepositional.
Technically it’s the other way around - the ones German lost in comparison to Russian were the Instrumental and Prepositional (Locative).
This is from the original 8 (or 9) cases in their ancestor, Proto-Indo-European: Nominative, Accusative, Instrumental, Dative, Ablative, Genitive, Locative, Vocative, (Allative).
confuses the hell out of me (and I’m German)
And rightfully so. I’m also German, I learned Sorbian (slavic minority in Lusatia), and I can very much feel your pain.
Dude, I’m trying to learn German and those goddamn articles are so infuriating. I wonder how difficult it would be for there to be a linguistic reform to make it simpler
Quite the statement for an English comment. English spelling is nonsensical and in desperate need of a major reform. RobWords even made the case for using runes again as it would probably fix a lot of issues already. The language simply isn’t made for Latin letters.
But I don’t want to make this a sole whataboutism comment. Each language poses it’s own challenges. I will say that changing how roughly 100 million speak is easier said than done and would destroy a lot of culture. It would be much easier to force everyone to speak a different language entirely.
Personally I don’t think it should or could be done at all. Unlike a spelling reform that English needs desperately and German had plenty of recently. There is nothing wrong with a language being complicated but there’s plenty wrong with arbitrary spelling if you ask me.
My native language isn’t English in case you were assuming that. I mention it because my native language has gone through a reform for the reasons of simplification. English may be shit, but it was much much easier to learn than the hell I am going through with German. Even Japanese, which I touched for a few years wasn’t nearly as bad. The point of languages it to be simple and efficient, and they should evolve to that goal eventually.
The point of languages it to be simple and efficient, and they should evolve to that goal eventually.
That’s one hell of an assumption to bring to the table. There is no point to language, no end goal towards which they must, or even should evolve. They’re a natural creation of humans to facilitate communication, but coming from human beings, they’re naturally quite irregular and odd, at times.
I mean, I get it that German isn’t a cakewalk to pick up, but you’re also complaining about the unreasonable complexity in one of the less morphologically complex European languages. Take a gander at Polish, Icelandic, Basque, or Finnish, and German will probably seem quite charming and quaint with its handful of cases and corresponding forms of the articles.
They’re a natural creation of humans to facilitate communication
If a language is easy to learn and easy to use, more people will speak it. The languages that don’t adapt die with the people who still insist on using it. There is an evolution and there is a goal, as you said, to communicate. A simpler language is bound to be chosen over one that adds obstacles to communication.
In the same way evolution is mostly driven by an animal’s ability to pass off its genes, language is mostly driven by it’s ability to be used and learned.
Now I’m thinking about Esperanto, maybe that is not completely true, idk
But the point of a language is not to spread to the most people, it is for the peoples using it being able to use it in a way that makes it possible to communicate with their own in a way that makes sense within the local population, its culture and history.
Different languages have a different learning curve based on what language you grew up with. What is hard for you might be a cakewalk for someone coming from a different language, especially if you are coming from a different family of languages.
here is an evolution and there is a goal, as you said, to communicate
I would argue that this is just humans attributing intent to a natural process that has none, and is the same sort of erroneous attribution of intent to natural processses as when people say that history has some grand end goal it’s working towards. I believe this is amply demonstrated in the lack of success found by Esperanto and similar conlangs that were deliberately constructed in order to be easy to learn for a wide range of people as a neutral lingua franca. If what you claim about the purpose and goal of language were true, these conlangs should have seen widespread adoption and be the most widely spoken languages today, rather than their current status as quirky ideas that are mostly of no interest to people who aren’t complete nerds for studying languages.
Gendered nouns in German are just as stupid and arbitrary as spelling in English. Why is a pencil masculine? Why is beer neutral but coffee masculine? Why is school feminine?
Then you end up with less flexibility and more fixed word order. English used to have cases though they’ve almost entirely collapsed at this point. German is fine as it is. Learn some grammar and it will become second nature.
i’m doing my part. fuck grammar rules. der/die/das -> de
Russian doesn’t have definite/indefinite articles?
it doesn’t really use article at all.
it’s highly cased, the cases and inflection do all the work.
That doesn’t sound more simple.
English has strict word order and all these stupid helper words, how is that simpler?
By being the devil we know, I guess? 🤷🏻
The case are quite complicated, yes. But not having articles is way simpler. And I can’t say it ever caused confusion growing up.
Neither does Polish. I know at least one polaka who confuses the/a(n) 15% of the time.
One of my Polish colleagues, who otherwise speaks pretty perfect English, seems to choose he/she/it at random when putting sentences together. Which is fine for objects, but misleading for people. “I saw a friend yesterday and she said such-and-such” for a male friend, and so on.
Slavic languages notoriously have gender for every object. In russian “friend” have two variants, one for male gender, one for female. Same at least with Ukrainian and Serbian. So when I translate sentence to English (which only have one word for “friend”) I subconsciously use default word + she/he to empathize gender.
It’s annoying habit, cause when I say or refer to “user” for example, I always assume it’s “he/him”.
Guess same for your colleagues.
…which sounds surprising to me, because AFAIK Polish also has separate he/she words (on/ona).
And they aren’t clear when to use them either, it’s kinda cute when they look at you questioningly if they did correctly after formulating a sentence.
I think it’s the case with most Slavic languages. My wife’s native tongue is Serbian, and knowinf when and how to use articles was one the hardest parts of learning English for her.
Persian(Farsi) also doesn’t have a word for “The”. We just say the word. There’s also no gender prefixes. The whole language is gender neutral.
Our ancestors were really up to something thousands of years ago.
In English, there is an implied difference between “the girl downstairs was playing violin” (‘the girl’ implying expected knowledge - “oh, her”) versus “a girl downstairs was playing violin” (‘a girl’ - random, likely unknown).
More broadly “a thing” - one of many, “the thing” - a specific one.
How would that translate to Farsi?
Don’t know about Farsi, but in Russian you would have to declare your knowledge and specificity of the subject. You can transmit some of that information by changing word emphasis
As for your sentences I would translate them as:
- The girl downstairs was playing violin → Девушка [girl] внизу [downstairs] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].
- A girl downstairs was playing violin - Внизу [downstairs] девушка [girl] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].
The first one puts more emphasis on the “girl”. The second one puts more emphasis on “downstairs”, almost suggesting that the identity of the girl doesn’t matter, kinda “some girl who happened to be downstairs”. But it is not as explicit as a definite/indefinite article for sure.
We do the opposite. If something is known we just say it “The girl(1) is playing(2) violin(3) downstairs(4)” دختر(۱) در طبقهی پایین(۴) ویالن(۳) مینوازد(۲)
To refer to an unknown thing we add a prefix ی to the thing
A girl -> دختری The girl -> دختر
I guess the is implied, count is explicit. A thing becomes one thing and the thing becomes thing.
Is the number one used like “a” then? Like a direct translation of the 2 phrases would be “Girl downstairs is playing the violin.” and “one girl downstairs is playing the violin.” As opposed to English using the/a respectively?
As per Google translate it seems so.
Czech is even worse than German.
Elaborate.
I thought there wasn’t a word for “the”.Never mind. I didnt realize it was for “the”. You’re correct, there is no “the” in Czech. I saw the German part and i was triggered by Czech cases (7 of them).
Latin is also the cat
English acting like it’s not a fucked up language where “the big, red, round, wrapped box” is fine but “the wrapped, round, red, big box” is wrong.
Oh, we know it’s fucked up. I still can’t spell recieve and receipt and I have to look up pretty much every single new word I learn to find out how it’s pronounced.
I thought through it and I’d wager a stiff draught that it ought not be so rough, though as I’m taught, it’s nought to cough at that a sturdy, taut bough would snap under the weight of its idiosyncrasies.
It sounds unnatural to me as a native speaker, but I don’t know that it’s “wrong”. Even the Germanic languages as a family don’t consistently have the same order for words like that, which is neat.
It’s because of the adjective order. You grow up hearing everyone else use the same common adjective order. In this case it should be size shape color than condition.
Overall it would be opinion size, age shape, color, origin material purpose.
Because everyone uses that same adjective order as a child. You picked up on that so consciously and then adopted that style. There’s nothing that actually prevents you from mixing that up. There’s no rule or some sort of quirk of English that will break if you change that order.
You’re just not used to any other way so it sounds weird.
But changing that order won’t create any sort of confusion or loss of understanding. It’ll just make you have to actively think about something thus slowing you down. We’re doing it the way that everyone does it subconsciously is faster because you don’t have to actively think of it.
So by default you will always choose the fastest way to communicate. Because that’s going to require the least amount of thought for both yourself and the other party.
But again there is no reason you can’t change it.
The only real issue I can think of is if you do change it on purpose it would create an emphasis because you’re breaking a normality. Cuz people just subconsciously assume you go from subjective to objective when it comes to adjectives.
And changes to the standard stand out and thus create points of interest. But again, even that is still not a hard syntax rule.
English doesn’t really have a lot of hard rules. You can f*** with it real hard and it won’t break. Though you may sound very funny!.
It’s only wrong in how it makes your soul feel. Gramatically, it’s okay.
Yeah… English is a frankenstein language…
Also the adjective order is fucked…
We don’t have an equivalent of a/an/the in lithuanian either =w= but we do have definite adjective forms, which is kind of like saying the, so there’s that
ETO TOM
TOM MEDIC
thanks duolingo
lui
I think this is the first time I’ve seen this meme format with more than two panels.
Let’s add dialects to the mess:
While not written in “book” German*, colloquial German may feature des, dat, det or dit instead of das, shorten der to dr or elide parts (like the French l’, except it may be attached to the previous word): Das ist das Problem mit der deutschen Sprache -> Des isch’s Problem mit dr deutscha Sproach
(“That is the problem with the German language.” Bonus: notice how the demonstrative pronoun “that” is also
das? Just in case you were hoping it was restricted to “the”…)* Hochdeutsch or Standarddeutsch (“High German” or “Standard German”), originally a written form slowly evolved over centuries to be most widely understood and has since been formalised. Informally, the term is also used for a spoken counterpart properly called Bühnendeutsch (“Stage German”), which isn’t always quite as “pure”, hence my distinction.
I bloody love my language.
