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Almost any time someone tries to make a point about a culture based on their language, ignore them. Languages, for the most part, evolve on their own, independe
by gizmo686 11y ago
Almost any time someone tries to make a point about a culture based on their language, ignore them. Languages, for the most part, evolve on their own, independent of cultural considerations. For example, in Spanish, the word for house (casa) is female, just like (almost?) all nouns in Spanish are gendered. This does not mean that gender plays a stronger role in Spanish speaking cultures than in cultures that speak a less gendered language, it is simply the way the language evolved.
It is worth pointing out that English also lets you omit the subject in some circumstances, namly commands. For example, we consider "clear your room" to be a complete sentence, despite the fact that it omits the subject, "you".
- anthracis417 11y agoEnglish almost always drops the pronoun in the imperative, for example like Portuguese and the familiar form of you in German. English doesn't really ever drop the subject of the sentence otherwise...
- sdrothrock 11y agoSure, it does. If you're talking casually with friends, it's pretty common to drop the initial pronoun, especially when it's implied from context... which is exactly what happens in Japanese, except the context is larger. "[You] Gonna eat that pizza?" "[I'm] Gonna go to the store." "Where's John?" / "[He's] Eating."