• TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s probably makes sense once explained properly but as an outsider to gendered languages in general it feels like the stupidest archaic idea ever lol.

    • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      1 year ago

      Grammatical gender has nothing to do with sexual gender. It is simply the expression on how words are declined in different cases.

      • TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m not arguing there is good reason and thoughtful context haha, I’m certain of that. Just makes learning a mess if you’ve not encountered it beforehand lol.

    • uis@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      As an insider to gendered language it feels like the stupidest idea ever to make non-gendered language gendered and call it inclusion or whatever they call it.

        • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          This is just a guess since the above comment appears to come out of nowhere and doesn’t explain further.

          In gendered languages, there are often gender-neutral words, but some people say that it is sexist and demand a female form for that word, making it gendered.

          For example in Spanish, “médico” (medical doctor) used to be the only word for both men and women, but since it looks like a masculine word (because it ends in “o”) people complained about it and made “médica” for women. So before we had “El/la médico” and now we have “El médico” and “la médica”.

          In my opinion this is such a double standard because it is only done with words that appear masculine. For example “pianista” (player of piano) is feminine looking but gender neutral (so you can say “El/la pianista”).

      • TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        English is a clusterfuck no doubt about it. I don’t know if losing the gendered portion over time was such a bad thing though. Might’ve made it more accessible in some ways and that helps a language survive I think. But I’m not a linguist and there’s a million other factors too.