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What's the point of gendered words in certain languages?
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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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I'm not fluent in any gendered languages, but afaict in many situations pronouns are removed in favor of a gendered suffix, shortening phrases.
If those languages allow for zero subject pronouns (like Spanish or Italian) and the omitted noun is actually the subject this may be the case, but I speak Italian and can not think of a real world sentence where this happens because when we put emphasis on an element we tend to use a (gendered) pronoun or a noun to disambiguate anyway.
While distinguishing gender may be sensitive for animate (although with big problems for being inclusive anyway) it makes really no sense for inanimate entities. In Italian they are assigned randomly to either gender, even loanwords can get either (usually masculine but not always). It's a matter of style, a legacy of the past, but natural languages tend to have these "artistic" features that only embellish them without any real world advantage, violating the principle of linguistic economy.
That makes sense, as a native English speaker I still find it hard to understand how the gendering of non-pronouns plays out in real conversation
Aside from English I assume? :)
Imo English is mostly devoid of gendered nouns. Things like waiter and waitress, actor and actress, postman and post woman are still around but most nouns are not gendered. Gender is still considered essential for English pronouns, but it's easy to do without.