Why do some languages use gendered nouns? It seems to just add more complexity for no benefit.

  • Skua@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    Your cat example works because it shows an example that is ambiguous in English but not in German. Zezhin’s example was showing something that wasn’t ambiguous in English, a language with no noun class distinctions outside of referring to things by their actual gender, so there’s no benefit to having more general noun classes in that example

    • Wasgaytsiedasan@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      9 months ago

      He was showing how gendered words can resolve ambiguity in an example were this also applies in english, so that you can extrapolate to situations like the one I (or the other replies) showed.