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People who speak English as a second language: how confusing is it that nouns are not gendered? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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It's a rare example of English being simpler than other languages, so I'm curious if it's hard for a new speaker to keep the nouns straight without the extra clues.

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[–] 139 points 2 years ago (3 children)

not at all. it simplifies the learning experience by quite a bunch.

one of the more confusing is learning other gendered languages where the gender of some object is different to the one in your mother tongue

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    To make matters worse, some languages have the exact same word but with a different gender. Heat in Spanish is el calor but in Catalán is la calor

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  • [–] 50 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    To make matters even worse, in some languages the exact same word with different gender has different meaning.

    In German:
    "der Band", male, = a (book) volume
    "das Band", neutral, = ribbon
    "die Band", female = (music) band

    Bonus: "die Bande" can be a gang, a sports barrier, and (relationship) ties.

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 2 years ago

    one of the more confusing is learning other gendered languages where the gender of some object is different to the one in your mother tongue

    That's something I hadn't really considered. Interesting!

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