Why do some languages use gendered nouns? It seems to just add more complexity for no benefit.
oftentimes grammatical gender actually makes the language easier, paradoxically, and I’m sure there’s a really good explanation out there
Why do some languages use gendered nouns?
Submitted 8 months ago by gorysubparbagel@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
6mementomori@lemmy.world 8 months ago
quilan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I don’t have the source with me, but I recall a paper about listening to various languages unser different signal/ noise thresholds. If I recall correctly, languages like German that have multiple declensions were about to better able to parse noisy samples because of the redundant information. Sorry for not having the source off hand though.
guyrocket@kbin.social 8 months ago
The simple answer I'm seeing on a quick review is that it is a way to simplify the complexity of the many possible nouns that could be uttered.
"LA pap"
"LE pep"These are imaginary words but the articles will help distinguish them from each other for a native speaker. They sound similar but I know it was "pap" and not "pep" because I also heard "la".
Also, gender is just ONE of the many possible dimensions used by noun classes in language. There are also things like size and animate/inanimate that are used by languages.
reddig33@lemmy.world 8 months ago
guyrocket@kbin.social 8 months ago
That was interesting, but I think this explains it a bit better.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ljrtQtj4BOM&pp=ygUbTGluZ3Vpc3RpY3MgbGFuZ3VhZ2UgZ2VuZGVy
Nemo@midwest.social 8 months ago
Complexity is a benefit when it comes to language, as it allows greater or more robust transfer of information. There’s a good comment downthread about how gender makes a language more robust: you know which object a pronoun refers to.
I’ll point out that English is not free of gendered nouns, either: Ships, cities, and most nations are feminine, for example.
livus@kbin.social 8 months ago
Ships, cities, and most nations are feminine, for example.
Ships maybe but the other two are only feminine to old people. Even the stodgiest newspaper isn't saying things like "The US sends her ambassador".
raef@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Those are just esoteric or poetic uses. It’s perfectly fine to just say “it” in all those cases, but there is still a distinction for people. It’s worth considering the possibilities of that disappearing as well. In any case, we don’t conjugate differently for genders
small44@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It makes the language richer and more beautiful in my opinion
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Because languages aren’t constructed, they ‘evolved’ naturally from humans communicating with one another for many generations. As such, they aren’t intended to be as simple as possible. They aren’t intended in the first place. They’ve grown over time with no regard for whether the rules makes sense because nobody designed those rules, they just happened.
jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 8 months ago
Esperanto is designed, and so is C++.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I thought this was a discussion about languages people speak.
Esperanto is an interesting case though but it wasn’t designed to be as simple as a language can be (since that is highly subjective). It was designed to have as many similarities as possible to major European language in order to make it easier for speakers of those European languages to learn.
qaz@lemmy.world 8 months ago
C++ is perhaps a great example of a language that has evolved over time without people putting a lot thought in it.