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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[-] Etterra@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Eh, gendered nouns are just an old holdover. At least English (usually) uses words to improve specificity. For example, "Pick up my medicine" as opposed to "pick up medicine." It seems redundant to some until suddenly you need to specify after the fact.

The more precise the language the fewer chances of miscommunication. A perfect language would be precise and unambiguous without deliberate effort (as opposed to laziness, slang, shorthand, etc.) which is probably completely impossible to craft, much less about.

[-] Windex007@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

I disagree that being perfectly unambiguous is a feature of a "perfect" language.

Ambiguity creates holes for us to fill, and some people don't realize how good it feels to fill those holes.

[-] ValiantDust@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

Out of German and English, I always found German to be better suited for factual texts (scientific papers and essays, news textbooks, encyclopedias etc.) because it's less ambiguous and English for more creative writing (novels, poems, opinion pieces, speeches etc.) because there is more scope for the imagination and the ambiguity leaves more room for double entendres, puns and other fun stuff. There are advantages to both.

this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024

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