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
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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.
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!
Yeah I basically never thought about the gender of English nouns because there's very few reasons to
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
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!
If you want to be more confused, you should know that some languages have gendered verbs.
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.
Where, were, ware...
Wear
I will read that book again that i read before
That's because Sean isn't an English word.
Not with that attitude it doesn't!
I'm a Finnish speaker. Nouns aren't gendered in Finnish either, so that's not weird.
Things that do trip me up:
Actually, I'm learning French right now and gendered nouns aren't even that much of a problem. I was dreading the numerals more.
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.
Not at all, it's easier that other gendered languages since object genders get shuffled up.
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.
You get used to it. The other way around is likely a lot harder, considering that a new concept is being introduced.
Can confirm. English is my first language and I took German in high school; it was basically just memorization for which words get which.
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.
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.
These are on the decline these days in favour of gender neutral terms, e.g.
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
Arabic speaker here and now that you mention it, the way sentences can get very long without a way to tell what the fourth "it" in the sentence refers to can be a bit of a pain, as is having to reword said sentences when writing to avoid ambiguity, but what you're thinking of there is declensions more than gendered nouns themselves. I mean gender doesn't hurt to have but it's the fact that in other European languages words change shape depending on their role in the sentence that's making the difference here.
I find the lack of capitalisation to be worse honestly. A lot of sentences where it is not clear at first whether something is a noun or not
Capitalisation also makes skimming texts so much easier and faster since you can just jump from noun to noun until you find something relevant. I wish more languages would do it.
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.
Not a problem at all for me.
English is missing quite a few grammatical features that are necessary for understanding of a German sentence. The genderedness (lolwat is that a word?) nouns helps recognise references, as does ~~declination~~ declension of nouns. German (as presumably other languages do) also uses a LOT more commas than English to structure sentences. So if you know what to look for, it can be very easy to parse even a complicated German sentence because everything has a signal attached telling you what it's doing in that sentence.
Obviously language can work perfectly fine without those features or English wouldn't exist. Still, there are frequently sentences in English that would have to be reworded quite heavily to lose their ambiguity, such as when there are several "it"s referenced and you have to take half a second to figure out which one is which. That's when I do sometimes miss my native language's features - but it's also when native English speakers struggle.
Edit: declination vs declension. Go away, I just woke up lol
As someone trying to learn Spanish I wish there was no gendering in Spanish. It makes the language significantly harder to learn.
Some of them are, which is even more confusing.
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
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
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.