this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
3 points (71.4% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26875 readers
3278 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I know a lot of languages have some aspects that probably seem a bit strange to non-native speakers…in the case of gendered words is there a point other than “just the way its always been” that explains it a bit better?

I don’t have gendered words in my native language, and from the outside looking in I’m not sure what gendered words actually provide in terms of context? Is there more to it that I’m not quite following?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

There is no point!

Languages evolve. They are not invented, designed, engineered by people. Human language evolved just like the human body evolved, just like the genome and the microbiome evolved.

There’s probably more to it but the more isn’t the sort of thing that could be explained in documentation.

What I mean by the more isn’t super clear to me. I’ll just say I didn’t fully grasp the Spanish language, which I had studied and spoken for many years, until I smoked a joint with a Swiss girl in college and we listened to some songs being sung in Spanish. All of a sudden I realized there are things you can express in Spanish that you can’t in English.

That may or may not have to do with it being a gendered language; I don’t know. I don’t even know what it is that I saw. I just realized there was some parallel thread running beside the string of words, that I don’t have in English. That you can’t do in English.