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Pronouns (lemmy.world)
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Wait until you learn languages with gendered articles

[-] EvilCartyen@feddit.dk 8 points 1 year ago

The thing about grammatical gender is that it doesn't really have much to do with sex or gender identity. In German, for instance, 'mädchen' (girl) is neuter. Gender in French is 98% assigned based on the pronunciation of the three final syllables. In Danish, living things tend to be 'common gender' and inanimate objects tend to be 'neuter'.

It'd be more accurate to call it 'noun classes' than gender.

[-] Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 year ago

It’d be more accurate to call it ‘noun classes’ than gender.

And that's exactly what they're called in other languages like Hawaiian and Swahili.

[-] EvilCartyen@feddit.dk 7 points 1 year ago

Well, yes. But not for Indo-European languages which is... mostly a historical artifact. But we're still sticking to teaching traditional grammar using traditional terminology, which is super frustrating. Imagine if you kept teaching maths in a manner which you knew was fundamentally wrong, but it was just too much work to reeducate all maths teachers.

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this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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