this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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My native language is genderless so I really dislike all the gendered grammar and words in different languages. English is very easy but in other cases when you start to have a male and a female version of each word which sometimes can be irregular and give you the clue that ohh yeah this should be male but noooo it's female and in many cases there is just simply no logic behind them it is just the way they are.
English is barely gendered. In Slavic languages, as someone said, verbs are conjugated differently based on gender. In Serbian for instance, to say "I saw him", you would say "Video sam ga" if you were a man, and "Videla sam ga" if you were a woman. In Arabic I think even more things vary based on gender, like "to you" has different forms based on whether "you" are a man or a woman. It might not be specifically that, but I distinctly recall Arabic using gender-based forms for something that Slavic languages don't.
Hell, German has three genders. "The" is translated der, die or das depending on the noun
Three genders, and 5 words for "the": der, die, das, dem, den. Depending on the gender of the noun and its function in the sentence.
You forgot “des”
Serves me right for trying to show off :D
And uses some of those words for "the" to be different versions of different genders in different cases.
Der nominative male, der Dativ female.
But call also be "that" or "which" or "who" depending on context.
Not to mention declension of adjectives.
Different declination for all three genders plus plural, plus differences for negation, no article, definite article, indefinite article all in in nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, version
If Excel spreadsheets for different versions of "the" turn you on, then German is your language.
Yeah, I meant 3 words for the nominative case but your answer is more exact
Yeah Arabic is pretty gendered
German even has a neutral gender because two aren't enough of a headache lol
Plus 4 cases which makes it so that there are 16 (Masc, Fem, Neutr, Plural X 4 cases) different ways of typing an article depending on the gender of the word and what the word is doing whereas in English this is all replaced by "The". And don't forget about declining the adjective and the noun in some cases.
Rant over.
And then like half of the articles are "der" and you just have to use context to figure out which one it is
Edit: I was randomly reminded of this graffiti I saw in Berlin:
So just get the whole country to use one “the”, simple 😎
... Aaaand as it turns out, most European languages are gendered. At least more gendered than ours.
In most European languages you have to worry about misgendering a table.