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Actually, I don't mind redundancy. I meant to criticize the lack of logic and consistency. If it was logical and consistent, it should have been das Farhschein,

Actually, I don't mind redundancy. I meant to criticize the lack of logic and consistency. If it was logical and consistent, it should have been das Farhschein, das Fahrkarte and das Ticket :-)

veddox 11y ago
I understand where you're coming from, but your solution wouldn't actually be logical and consistent either. "Fahrschein" comes from the root "Schein" (engl. "slip (of paper)"), which is masculine ("der Schein"); "Fahrkarte" comes from "Karte" (engl. "card"/"map"), which is feminine ("die Karte"), and "Ticket" is, afaik, an anglicism (which are often designated as neuter)... So in order to achieve consistency across these three words, one would have to break consistency with their roots - a bit of a catch 22...
jhanschoo 11y ago
It isn't illogical or inconsistent. The notion that grammatical gender is illogical comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose of grammatical gender. We learn in schools that words are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Gender is useful for several things: think of it as a technology with multiple applications, some more obvious than others. The most obvious would be to indicate whether a pronoun is male, female, or inanimate. One of the more important uses for gender is for agreement. Agreement in gender helps to denote which noun an adjective belongs to. Of course, it's not foolproof, but it's good enough. In addition to agreement, genders increase the information redundancy of words, which is useful when communicating in a noisy, lossy medium. Admittedly, genders that actually correspond to the natural gender of the things they refer to may not detract from the purpose of information redundancy and of agreement, but as with many things in life, good enough is sufficient cause to adopt the status quo. What I'm trying to say is, under the supposition that genders should reflect natural gender, they do indeed appear illogical and inconsistent. But genders do indeed have practical purposes and do indeed develop according to certain rules, and if we judge genders by these criteria instead, their development does indeed follow rules and is consistent.

Actually, I don't mind redundancy. I meant to criticize the lack of logic and consistency. If it was logical and consistent, it should have been das Farhschein, das Fahrkarte and das Ticket :-)

veddox 11y ago

I understand where you're coming from, but your solution wouldn't actually be logical and consistent either. "Fahrschein" comes from the root "Schein" (engl. "slip (of paper)"), which is masculine ("der Schein"); "Fahrkarte" comes from "Karte" (engl. "card"/"map"), which is feminine ("die Karte"), and "Ticket" is, afaik, an anglicism (which are often designated as neuter)... So in order to achieve consistency across these three words, one would have to break consistency with their roots - a bit of a catch 22...

jhanschoo 11y ago

It isn't illogical or inconsistent. The notion that grammatical gender is illogical comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose of grammatical gender. We learn in schools that words are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Gender is useful for several things: think of it as a technology with multiple applications, some more obvious than others. The most obvious would be to indicate whether a pronoun is male, female, or inanimate. One of the more important uses for gender is for agreement. Agreement in gender helps to denote which noun an adjective belongs to. Of course, it's not foolproof, but it's good enough. In addition to agreement, genders increase the information redundancy of words, which is useful when communicating in a noisy, lossy medium. Admittedly, genders that actually correspond to the natural gender of the things they refer to may not detract from the purpose of information redundancy and of agreement, but as with many things in life, good enough is sufficient cause to adopt the status quo. What I'm trying to say is, under the supposition that genders should reflect natural gender, they do indeed appear illogical and inconsistent. But genders do indeed have practical purposes and do indeed develop according to certain rules, and if we judge genders by these criteria instead, their development does indeed follow rules and is consistent.