Comment on why

kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• Cheesus@lemmy.ca ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  In French, it’s ‘le pénis,’ but nobody says that. ‘Dick,’ is feminine (la bite.)

  Also, ‘vagina’ is masculine, but ‘pussy’ is feminine, because if you were to say ‘le chat’ it would mean a cat, but by feminising the word, it becomes ‘la chatte,’ meaning pussy.

  As someone who grew up Anglophone, I actually find gendered languages much more precise. On the other hand, in order to make yourself understood one must have a rich vocabulary, because the definitions of words are often more narrow than in English.

  And don’t even get me started on phrasal verbs… English is messy.

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  • Kornblumenratte@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I don’t get the weirdness of phrasal verbs? It’s a basic staple of every Indoeuropean language to generate verbs by tacking on prepositions. Ok, it’s a bit weird to use prepositions after the word, but that’s just standard Germanic separable verbs that are a bit regulized. So what?

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    • Cheesus@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      They’re just so ubiquitous in English. In my experience, people coming from the Romance languages have a very hard time with them, because most of the actions they describe are a single verb in their mother tongues. Imagine having to remember what two words mean, but then also having to remember that when you use the two words together, they form a distinct, sometimes even unrelated, meaning.

      And there’s thousands.

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  • deHaga@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You’d better back down before this blows up or i break down

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    • samus12345@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      back up - actual phrase

      break up - actual phrase

      Why no blow down?

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    • Cheesus@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Pure poetry.

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• rustyricotta@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I would love to see that discuss

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• hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Sorry, I don’t understand what I am seeing here. Is that someone xeeting a screenshot of someone reporting to Duolingo that penis should be feminine, not masculine in Spanish?

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