People who speak English as a second language: how confusing is it that nouns are not gendered? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago by Zombiepirate@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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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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[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 8 points 2 weeks ago

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.

this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024

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