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[Oppo]

I like english because it doesn't assign all these crazy arbitrary sexes to inanimate objects.

 

[dinazimmerman]

To the surprise of the researchers, however, differences in efficiency were only minimal.

The key sentence. The message isn't as fun, though. =P

 

[demon]

I like english because it doesn't assign all these crazy arbitrary sexes to inanimate objects.

This. I fucking hated memorizing that crap in French and Italian class.

 

[CornBurrito]

I like english because it doesn't assign all these crazy arbitrary sexes to inanimate objects.

Oh my god this.

 

[BertramCooper]

I like english because it doesn't assign all these crazy arbitrary sexes to inanimate objects.

I always found French incredibly sexist in this regard.

If you want to say "they" for a group of 10,000 women, you use "elles."

If you want to say "they" for a group of 9,999 women and one man, you use "ils."

No matter how many women you have, a single man switches the pronoun to a masculine form.

To be clear, I'm not actually offended by it. It's just a funny, archaic quirk of the language.

 

[CornBurrito]

I always found French incredibly sexist in this regard.

If you want to say "they" for a group of 10,000 women, you use "elles."

If you want to say "they" for a group of 9,999 women and one man, you use "ils."

No matter how many women you have, a single man switches the pronoun to a masculine form.

To be clear, I'm not actually offended by it. It's just a funny, archaic quirk of the language.

I think it is the same with Hebrew, and probably a ton of other languages.

 

[Foxy Fox 39]

I like english because it doesn't assign all these crazy arbitrary sexes to inanimate objects.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

 

[BertramCooper]

I think it is the same with Hebrew, and probably a ton of other languages.

Yeah, French is certainly not alone in this regard.

It's just the foreign language I'm most familiar with.

 

[Drkirby]

I personally like how English is slower paced, and has distant syllables.

 

[DopeyFish]

I'd say english is easiest to understand out of all languages when broken

You can know a few key words, and an English speaker can repeat the words back even with the tenses all messed up and still get the point across - the context in a sentence vs the context of a few words, you can easily fill in the blanks to figure out wtf they are talking about and respond

At its most basic form, for tourists, the language can be very direct

But it's all dependent on vocabulary- you can get away with not properly structuring a sentence... Majority of English speakers, including myself, don't structure our sentences perfectly and take liberties as it suits our needs

 

[Alpha-Bromega]

the way i can express myself in English is so damn crazy, i didn't realize the liberties in the language until i got pretty good in German, which is a very efficient and logical language. In fact most languages i've dabbled in besides English are really systematic, pleasant and just make sense. Other languages have actual systems in place, like conjugations, cases, etc. which actually make sense


English doesn't have any of that shit, and because of that we can basically do whatever the hell we want in the language and it somehow can make sense. is that a noun? turn it into a verb! is that a verb? its now an adverb, no fuck it its whatever you want man who cares! google google you damn t-rex or i'm gonna suplex you googleplex times

 

[sestrugen]

la computadora
el computador

l'ordinateur

a computer


no inanimate object sexual definition is better

 

[Korey]

USA wins yet again

 

[The Librarian]

I like english because it doesn't assign all these crazy arbitrary sexes to inanimate objects.

+1

 

[WeaponKnight]

This. I fucking hated memorizing that crap in French and Italian class.

The thing is... when you are a native speaker, it actually feels wrong to assign a different sex to an object. You can't call a glass "a copo", glasses are masculine. It needs to be "o copo". "A chícara" is fine, cups are feminine.
I remember when Lara finds some ruins in one of the newer Tomb Raider games, she says "SHE's beautiful!". Now, how would she know that ruins are feminine? I chuckled, because they are feminine in Portuguese. It's weird.

One of the things I don't like in English is that is doesn't differentiate between being and being.
Ela está doente - She is sick
Ele é doente - He is sick

In the former, she has a disease. She is, at the moment, sick. In the latter, he is a sick or disturbed person. In Portuguese and Spanish, we make this clear by using the verbs ser or estar. English needs context to decypher that, and sometimes causes misunderstandings...

 

[Alpha-Bromega]

la computadora
el computador

l'ordinateur

a computer


no inanimate object sexual definition is better

it has nothing to do with the efficiency of the language, in fact gender and their case declensions allow for more precision and flavor to the language.

if languages were about efficiency, we'd be speaking esperanto or some synth. thankfully they are the collection of cultural identities and ways of thinking, which is why learning a language is one of the most rewarding things one could ever do for ones personal development.

 

[Magni]

I said
He said
They said
We said
The dog said
You said


Yo hablo
El habla
Ellos hablan
Nos hablamos
El perro habla
Tu hablas

Jeg sa.
Han sa.
Dere sa.
Vi sa.
Hunden sa.
Du sa.

Bokmål wins!

 

[DopeyFish]

The thing is... when you are a native speaker, it actually feels wrong to assign a different sex to an object. You can't call a glass "a copo", glasses are masculine. It needs to be "o copo". "A chícara" is fine, cups are feminine.
I remember when Lara finds some ruins in one of the newer Tomb Raider games, she says "SHE's beautiful!". Now, how would she know that ruins are feminine? I chuckled, because they are feminine in Portuguese. It's weird.

One of the things I don't like in English is that is doesn't differentiate between being and being.
Ela está doente - She is sick
Ele é doente - He is sick

In the former, she has a disease. She is, at the moment, sick. In the latter, he is a sick or disturbed person. In Portuguese and Spanish, we make this clear by using the verbs ser or estar. English needs context to decypher that, and sometimes causes misunderstandings...

What you are saying with those examples is that the translation is wrong, not that the context is missing. Sick is one of many words to use. You can change first to diseased and second to crazy. No added words. Sick means both sick (in the head) and sick (under the weather) as well as many other meanings depending on context so there's other, more appropriate words

Sick usually doesn't mean diseased in english fyi as we usually distinguish disease and sickness/illness as two separate things though they can mean the same thing by definition

 

[Korey]

The thing is... when you are a native speaker, it actually feels wrong to assign a different sex to an object. You can't call a glass "a copo", glasses are masculine. It needs to be "o copo". "A chícara" is fine, cups are feminine.
I remember when Lara finds some ruins in one of the newer Tomb Raider games, she says "SHE's beautiful!". Now, how would she know that ruins are feminine? I chuckled, because they are feminine in Portuguese. It's weird.

One of the things I don't like in English is that is doesn't differentiate between being and being.
Ela está doente - She is sick
Ele é doente - He is sick

In the former, she has a disease. She is, at the moment, sick. In the latter, he is a sick or disturbed person. In Portuguese and Spanish, we make this clear by using the verbs ser or estar. English needs context to decypher that, and sometimes causes misunderstandings...

You understand that English has a lot of words for things right? Sometimes multiple words for things, and even other words that you can use to be more precise

"He's disturbed"

 

[Magni]

The thing is... when you are a native speaker, it actually feels wrong to assign a different sex to an object. You can't call a glass "a copo", glasses are masculine. It needs to be "o copo". "A chícara" is fine, cups are feminine.
I remember when Lara finds some ruins in one of the newer Tomb Raider games, she says "SHE's beautiful!". Now, how would she know that ruins are feminine? I chuckled, because they are feminine in Portuguese. It's weird.

Learning Spanish when you speak French from birth is pretty easy, as the genders are almost always the same, the only exceptions I can remember from the top of my head are la voiture becoming el coche, la mairie becoming el ayuntamiento (these two not being very hard since the two words are so different), and la couleur becoming el color.

Try learning Norwegian after speaking one of those... not only do the genders have nothing to do with the Romance ones, but there is a third one added >< Same for German and all the other Scandinavian languages unless I'm mistaken (and in between those languages, it's pretty much like in between Romance languages in terms of genders, mostly the same with a few exceptions).

 

[IceCold]

English not have genders sucks.


If I say, "I have this friend blah blah blah..". You don't know if I'm talking about a female or or a male friend. Sure it's good thing if you are deceitful person and cheating on your girlfriend, but you'll need to make your sentence longer if you want to convey as much info as a gender based languages.

Also giving genders to inmate objects makes a language more interesting and allows you to do some cool stuff when it comes to literary figures of speech.

What you are saying with those examples is that the translation is wrong, not that the context is missing. Sick is one of many words to use. You can change first to diseased and second to crazy. No added words. Sick means both sick (in the head) and sick (under the weather) as well as many other meanings depending on context so there's other, more appropriate words

Sick usually doesn't mean diseased in english fyi as we usually distinguish disease and sickness/illness as two separate things though they can mean the same thing by definition

Here's another example:

Ela é bonita--> She's beautiful
Ela está bonita--->At this moment, she's beautiful. As in, you see some chick with some nice dress and you really want to stress that her look right now is beautiful.

 

[WeaponKnight]

You're right. I just don't like the verb to be, I guess. :lol

 

[Brannon]

I, too, like the whole 'resistance is futile' nature of English. Foreign words like jihad, infidel, tsunami, bueno excellente and schadenfreude are just plain fun to say.

 

[mantidor]

I like english because it doesn't assign all these crazy arbitrary sexes to inanimate objects.

But thats the best part of romance languages! that and the "to be" verb becoming "ser" and "estar" (portuguese and spanish, no idea about italian, french, is probably the same!)

I wouldn't like to be in a world in which "ser" and "estar" is the same thing, when they are obviously so different, I don't know how you people manage.

 

[DopeyFish]

English not have genders sucks.


If I say, "I have this friend blah blah blah..". You don't know if I'm talking about a female or or a male friend. Sure it's good thing if you are deceitful person and cheating on your girlfriend, but you'll need to make your sentence longer if you want to convey as much info as a gender based languages.

Also giving genders to inmate objects makes a language more interesting and allows you to do some cool stuff when it comes to literary figures of speech.





Here's another example:

Ela é bonita--> She's beautiful
Ela está bonita--->At this moment, she's beautiful. As in, you see some chick with some nice dress and you really want to stress that her look right now is beautiful.

she's beautiful
She looks beautiful

?

 

[Korey]

So is the internet a guy or a girl?

How about my mousepad?

 

[Magni]

So is the internet a guy or a girl?

How about my mousepad?

In French, both are masculine.

A mouse, however, is feminine (and a rat masculine).

 

[IceCold]

But thats the best part of romance languages! that and the "to be" verb becoming "ser" and "estar" (portuguese and spanish, no idea about italian, french, is probably the same!)

I wouldn't like to be in a world in which "ser" and "estar" is the same thing, when they are obviously so different, I don't know how you people manage.

In French ser/estar = être. I don't know about Italian.

 

[BocoDragon]

I'm sure Japanese is pretty quick, but with the verb being at the end of the sentence, you have to wait to hear the whole thing before you get the point.

 

[Magni]

In French ser/estar = être. I don't know about Italian.

Yeah that's basically one of the only difficulties for French people learning Spanish, that and por/para maybe (though almost every time, par => por and pour => para).

 

[Angry Grimace]

This is true. Most English speakers suck really bad at spanish (sorry, it's not easy, don't be deluded). They speak it like a robots, never grasping any of the subtleties the language has. I can tell right away who's an english speaker, while people from france or italy, for example, can be practically indistinguishable in expressing thoughts except for having an accent.
No surpirses here since like this study suggests, English is a lot more direct and blunt. It's two languages that work differently on a fundamental level, so it's not a matter of translating word to word and calling it a day. Kinda the same situation as with asian languages, but not so extreme.
IMO English generally lacks elegancy and detail, but I wasn't born an English speaker so my point of view is obviously skewed...

English has by far more words for the same number of verbs, objects, etc. by far than Spanish (or any other language, for that matter), but that doesn't mean everyone uses all of them. That's only accurate if you don't speak very good English. Many native speakers still don't.

 

[Kurtofan]

I, too, like the whole 'resistance is futile' nature of English. Foreign words like jihad, infidel, tsunami, bueno excellente and schadenfreude are just plain fun to say.

Infidel isn't a foreign word, unless you count words with a Latin origin to be foreign words.

In French ser/estar = être. I don't know about Italian.

Essere

io sono
tu sei
lui/lei è
noi siamo
voi siete
loro sono

 

[Alpha-Bromega]

Infidel isn't a foreign word, unless you count words with a Latin origin to be foreign words.

then there'd be no english language. it's fascinating that we're a germanic language whose vocabulary is almost entirely latin, and when not latin, french

 

[Alpha-Bromega]

So is the internet a guy or a girl?

How about my mousepad?

the concept of genders is arbitrary, meaning they're the names we give the articles. der, die, das are just... der, die, das. but for organization purposes linguists put them under 'genders', they door literally isn't a feminine door, it's just die Tür

i feel a lot of people don't understand this aspect, i didn't at first at all. i felt i was literally being told these had gendered qualities to them, but it's just arbitrary names we give the patterns. they could be called type 1-3 nouns for all we care, but since we're humans we anthropomorphise everything

 

[Angry Grimace]

English not have genders sucks.


If I say, "I have this friend blah blah blah..". You don't know if I'm talking about a female or or a male friend. Sure it's good thing if you are deceitful person and cheating on your girlfriend, but you'll need to make your sentence longer if you want to convey as much info as a gender based languages.

Also giving genders to inmate objects makes a language more interesting and allows you to do some cool stuff when it comes to literary figures of speech.





Here's another example:

Ela é bonita--> She's beautiful
Ela está bonita--->At this moment, she's beautiful. As in, you see some chick with some nice dress and you really want to stress that her look right now is beautiful.

This doesn't even make totally make sense, really.

It's intentional that words don't have inherent linguistic genders because objects do not have genders because they are inanimate. It's actually more imprecise to require a gender.

In the end everyone is going to claim their native tongue is the most precise because that's what they know how to speak the best.

the concept of genders is arbitrary, meaning they're the names we give the articles. der, die, das are just... der, die, das. but for organization purposes linguists put them under 'genders', they door literally isn't a feminine door, it's just die Tür

does that make sense? i feel a lot of people don't understand this aspect

The fact that it's relatively arbitrary is why it's inaccurate to claim its any more or less precise. It's just a linguistic rule of various languages.

 

[dudeworld]

When a new word becomes official in a language like French, how do they determine if it's masculine or feminine?

 

[Kurtofan]

When a new word becomes official in a language like French, how do they determine if it's masculine or feminine?

I don't think there are any rules, what's most popular and sounds the best sticks.

Words that come from a gendered language often keep the same gender(ie "la pizza" in Italian, "la pizza" in French")

 

[mantidor]

When a new word becomes official in a language like French, how do they determine if it's masculine or feminine?

Not sure about french but spanish has this implicit rules, when the word ends in an O or E, is masculine, when it ends in A is feminine, with I and U it can be anything but very few spanish words end in those vowels. Usually foreign words default to masculine (yes is a sexist language, it has been explained already)

I imagine all romance languages have similar rules.

 

[BocoDragon]

When a new word becomes official in a language like French, how do they determine if it's masculine or feminine?

On a similar note.. Who gets to decide new word hanzi/kanji in Asian writing systems??

 

[Übermatik]

Just one more thing America is best at.

I think you mean the English...

Spoiler

I think you mean the French...

 

[Magni]

On a similar note.. Who gets to decide new word hanzi/kanji in Asian writing systems??

Well for Japanese, for japanese, it's just katakana, no kanji, and for Japanese... compound existing kanji? I don't know honestly.

How do you search for a kanji in the dictionary if you don't know its pronunciation?

 

[Alx]

I always found French incredibly sexist in this regard.

If you want to say "they" for a group of 10,000 women, you use "elles."

If you want to say "they" for a group of 9,999 women and one man, you use "ils."

No matter how many women you have, a single man switches the pronoun to a masculine form.

To be clear, I'm not actually offended by it. It's just a funny, archaic quirk of the language.

I think it's not intended to be a rule about gender priority, only all neutral forms disappeared from French language a long time ago, and were replaced by default masculine instead. So 9999 women + 1 man should be neutral, but since it doesn't exist any more it uses the masculine form instead.
As a consequence, when someone hears about a group in masculine termes, like "ils arrivent / they're coming", he doesn't assume anything about the gender of the individuals.

When a new word becomes official in a language like French, how do they determine if it's masculine or feminine?

Like Kurtofan said, it depends... for some reason the common use picks a gender and it sticks, but there doesn't seem to be a rule. For example iPad and internet are masculine, while Playstation and Xbox are feminine (and even that may change depending on the country... French Canadians, Swiss or Belgians sometimes pick different genders).

 

[Magni]

Like Kurtofan said, it depends... for some reason the common use picks a gender and it sticks, but there doesn't seem to be a rule. For example iPad and internet are masculine, while Playstation and Xbox are feminine (and even that may change depending on the country... French Canadians, Swiss or Belgians sometimes pick different genders).

Concerning those: I'd wager that un iPad comes from un iPod which comes from un baladeur MP3 (a portable MP3 player), l'internet (masculine noun despite there not being an indefinite form) comes from un réseau (a network), whereas une Playstation and une Xbox (and every other console there is) come from une console.

I'd also say that most new words become masculines just because they're easier to accord (shorter):
l'Internet s'est coupé. (masculine)
l'Internet s'est coupée. (feminine)

 

[Kurtofan]

Concerning those: I'd wager that un iPad comes from un iPod which comes from un baladeur MP3 (a portable MP3 player), l'internet (masculine noun despite there not being an indefinite form) comes from un réseau (a network), whereas une Playstation and une Xbox (and every other console there is) come from une console.

I'd also say that most new words become masculines just because they're easier to accord (shorter):
l'Internet s'est coupé. (masculine)
l'Internet s'est coupée. (feminine)

People also just say Internet without any articles.

Je surfe sur Internet=I'm browsing the Web.

 

[genjiZERO]

...while Playstation and Xbox are feminine (and even that may change depending on the country... French Canadians, Swiss or Belgians sometimes pick different genders).

isn't that because "-ion" (and it's varients) are feminine?

 

[Vicetrailia]

While I guess English is the most efficient, culturally we don't make it the most efficient language.

 

[Magni]

Genji, that wouldn't explain: une Gameboy, une DS, une Wii, une NES, une Dreamcast, une Genesis etc etc

People also just say Internet without any articles.

Je surfe sur Internet=I'm browsing the Web.

Yeah I know, since it's never used in the indefinite form (and since it starts with a vowel, it has a 'neutral' l' as definite article when people even use it), I actually had to check to make sure it was a masculine :lol

 

[Alx]

isn't that because "-ion" (and it's varients) are feminine?

Maybe it helped... but I think Playstation is one of those words that is masculine in Quebec, and feminine in France.
There are other funny examples, like eyetoy (M) and kinect (F) having different genders, while being both cameras (F).
So yeah there's no rule set in stone, you'll always find a counter-example, like for everything in French.

 

[Cooter]

Terrific! Let's forcefully convert the entire globe over to english.

 

[Magni]

Maybe it helped... but I think Playstation is one of those words that is masculine in Quebec, and feminine in France.
There are other funny examples, like eyetoy (M) and kinect (F) having different genders, while being both cameras (F).
So yeah there's no rule set in stone, you'll always find a counter-example, like for everything in French.

Wait what? You crazy québécois say 'un Playstation' ? TABERNAC !!!