4 ms·

How does gendered nouns make it so you can more quickly refer to something mentioned earlier?

• nlitened 12d ago
  For example, if I am talking about a window and a door, and a window is masculine and a door is feminine, I can use the pronoun "it" in either masculine or feminine form to clearly refer to one or the other. Or I could use a verb "opened" in a masculine or feminine form, and it will be clear which of two things I mean without explicitly repeating.
  • andoando 12d ago
    Ah not all gendered languages have gendered verbs but for the ones that do it makes sense. In armenian we dont even have he/she and its fine. In some cases Im sure its not as elequant. For a natural speaker it doesnt matter, and for the vast majority of history you more or less had only natural speakers, but if were talking about learning languages, it is needlessly complicated for little to no benefit
    • eru 12d ago
      Well, in German you don't have gendered verbs, but windows are neutral and doors are female. So you can use the German equivalent of 'it' to refer to the window and 'she' to refer to the door, if you just mentioned them. Especially for long nouns, that's a lot faster than repeating them.
• shakow 12d ago
  FR: « J'ai transporté le canapé (M) et la table (F), mais il (M) s'est cassé. » -> the canapé/sofa is broken. EN: “I carried over the sofa and the table, but it(?)/the sofa broke”