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.

  • DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca
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    18 days ago

    Non-gendered wording isn’t exclusive to English, it’s mostly other European languages that stick to doing that.

    There are some languages that don’t even have different words for “he” and “she”.

    Edit: made the wording less asshole-y

    • Zombiepirate@lemmy.worldOP
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      18 days ago

      Non-gendered wording isn’t exclusive to English. Asia exists.

      I wasn’t trying to imply otherwise.

      Thanks for the insight!

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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      18 days ago

      Non-gendered wording isn’t exclusive to English. Asia exists.

      I mean to be fair those languages have other ways of determining which word does what other than sentence order and vibes if my knowledge of basic Chinese is correct.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    The nouns still are gendered. Only the article is gender-neutral.

    Tarzan is a man. He lives in the jungle.

    Jane is a woman. She is visiting Africa.

    The elephant is a non-named animal. It eats fruits and leaves.

    If you really want to know a confusing issue about the English language, just look at the pronunciation of words. It is more or less rule-free, and all over the place. Don’t believe me? Try to read the poem “The Chaos” aloud. Even most native speakers need several attempts.

  • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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    18 days ago

    Arabic speaker here and now that you mention it, the way sentences can get very long without a way to tell what the fourth “it” in the sentence refers to can be a bit of a pain, as is having to reword said sentences when writing to avoid ambiguity, but what you’re thinking of there is declensions more than gendered nouns themselves. I mean gender doesn’t hurt to have but it’s the fact that in other European languages words change shape depending on their role in the sentence that’s making the difference here.

  • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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    18 days ago

    Not.

    English is a very straigh forward to learn language.

    Now, an English native speaker learning a gender declining language… oh, how fun to watch.

      • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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        18 days ago

        I speak my native language for a couple of decades now and the more I speak it, the more I realize I don’t master it.

        I can read, write and hold a conversation in English. But if asked, I will say I can get by but very far from even the lowest level of mastery.

    • moonlight@fedia.io
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      18 days ago

      Mandarin truly has the best grammar. There are a few weird things, but in general it’s very simple and elegant.

  • lnxtx (xe/xem/xyr)@feddit.nl
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    18 days ago

    Slavic native speaker here.
    Not at all. Much simpler, in contrast with German.

    There are few gendered nouns, like a spoke(man/woman/person), act(or/ress), etc.

  • Lumidaub@feddit.org
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    18 days ago

    English is missing quite a few grammatical features that are necessary for understanding of a German sentence. The genderedness (lolwat is that a word?) nouns helps recognise references, as does declination declension of nouns. German (as presumably other languages do) also uses a LOT more commas than English to structure sentences. So if you know what to look for, it can be very easy to parse even a complicated German sentence because everything has a signal attached telling you what it’s doing in that sentence.

    Obviously language can work perfectly fine without those features or English wouldn’t exist. Still, there are frequently sentences in English that would have to be reworded quite heavily to lose their ambiguity, such as when there are several "it"s referenced and you have to take half a second to figure out which one is which. That’s when I do sometimes miss my native language’s features - but it’s also when native English speakers struggle.

    Edit: declination vs declension. Go away, I just woke up lol

  • YTG123@sopuli.xyz
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    18 days ago

    It’s not confusing at all, except in the very specific case of nouns referring to people or animals that don’t have gendered variants.

    For example, in my language, the word corresponding to “(a) sheep” has a masculine and feminine form, with the feminine used neutrally. Consequently, when seeing “sheep” in English, I assume the feminine and seeing it used with “he” is a bit of cognitive dissonance.

    Similarly, most words for human professions are by default masculine.

    • GlenRambo@jlai.lu
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      18 days ago

      Ive spent some times on farms and haven’t ever herd/used he for a singular male sheep before.

      If its a singular male I would say the ram.

      But its just normally sheep, generally female. If you want to be specific its weathers, ewes, lambs or rams.

    • Mad_Punda@feddit.org
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      18 days ago

      I remember reading a story written in English, and it kept mentioning „the cook“ (no pronoun, no name). My gender biased brain assumed the cook must be male. So I got confused when the pronoun „she“ finally appeared. I had to reread the paragraph to understand what was going on.
      Embarrassing and eye opening.

  • umbraroze@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    I’m a Finnish speaker. Nouns aren’t gendered in Finnish either, so that’s not weird.

    Things that do trip me up:

    • Pronouns (lack of T/V distinction (i.e. just one “you”) and gendered third person)
    • Articles (Finnish doesn’t have articles as such, so adding them sometimes takes some brainpower)
    • so freaking many irregular verbs etc
    • seriously what is this orthography even (Finnish grammar may be complex, but the same can’t be said of the pronunciation)

    Actually, I’m learning French right now and gendered nouns aren’t even that much of a problem. I was dreading the numerals more.

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    18 days ago

    Technically English is my third languge, but also simultaneously my most fluent.

    In short, not confusing at all. Because in Chinese (any variation of Chinese) nouns are also not gendered.

    Pronouns in Chinese are also not gendered

    He = 他 (tā)

    She = 他 (tā)

    No confusion with pronouns either. My parents constantly say he when refering to a woman, or she when refering to a man, or mix them up while talking about the same person in the same conversation. No me tho, I never get confused. I learned English at like grade 2-3.

    • wirelesswire@lemmy.zip
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      18 days ago

      Can confirm. English is my first language and I took German in high school; it was basically just memorization for which words get which.

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
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    18 days ago

    Swedish has genders, but not male/female but utrum/neutrum.

    These are not really rule bound, and has to be learned word by word.

    Some words are even double gendered but means different things depending on what gender is used.

    Example

    “En borr” / “borren” = a drill / the drill

    “Ett borr” / “borret” = a drill bit / the drill bit.

    But to answer your question, English is in many ways simpler than Swedish, you can specify any article by just putting “the” in front of it. In Swedish you need to select the proper -en/-et suffix with no real hard snd fast rule.

    Where english is annoying is compound words.

    “Realisationsvinstbeskattning” is the longest word in the Swedish dictionary, it is made up of three separate words,

    Realisation - Sale

    Vinst - Revenue

    Beskattning - taxation

    So the word simply means taxation on sale revenue.

    According to Guinness book of world records the longest Swedish from 2006 the longest Swedish word is:

    nordvästersjökustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranläggningsmaterielunderhållsuppföljningssystemdiskussionsinläggsförberedelsearbeten

    But that is just ridiculous and looks like it comes from a report for the military where someone made the word because they could and enjoyed languages.

    Lets break it down into individual words

    nord-väster-sjö-kust-artilleri-flyg-spanings-simulator-anläggnings-materiel-underhålls-uppföljnings-system-diskussions-inläggs-förberedelse-arbeten

    I am on mobile and the word would take too long to translate here, but it means

    “Preparatory groundwork for the discussion on maintenance systems for materials used in the coastal artillery’s flight reconnaissance simulator covering the north western costal sector.”

    The issue with English for a Swedish speaker is the lack of compound words, making Swedes used to separating compound words when writing. Which can have fun results:

    Herrskjorta = mens button down shirts

    Herr skjorta = Mr. Skjorta

    Kassapersonal = Cashier

    Kassa personal = terrible staff members

    • lookmomnodrugs@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      I am learning a lot here. I am also Swedish lol. I was however great with the English classes, easily top 3 (okay honestly though I am being humble, I was really dominating those classes up until high school, so hard I dont even remember anyone even being in second or third place)

      It sounds obnoxius but its true, if you also had a negative reaction to my story like myself, please find relief in that it was my peak and that I am single since years with heavy substance abuse going on the daily - also let me delete this in a bit okay bye lol

      • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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        17 days ago

        Because recognising when to use “a”, “the”, or 0 article is tricky.

        A/an is usually fine. 0 article and the are tricky, and then getting it right on the fly is hard.

        We take it all for granted and get it, but they’re hard for people who don’t have an equivalent in their first language.

  • MaggiWuerze@feddit.org
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    18 days ago

    I find the lack of capitalisation to be worse honestly. A lot of sentences where it is not clear at first whether something is a noun or not