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English & Afrikaans = More Advanced? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ColdBlue Groupie Angola Joined 6584 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 39 26 November 2006 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I was looking into learning some European languages the other day (like German, Russian, French etc) and I came across genders, and I was wondering... "why the hell do languages have genders?" I just couldn't phantom why a language would call a chair a girl, or a chalkboard a boy, it just doesn't make sense.
Now I know that both English and Afrikaans are "new" languages (with Afrikaans being more modern) and they both got rid of genders... and I'm wondering what for? Did the people realize that genders are totally useless? English also got rid of most of its cases and Afrikaans has no cases whatsoever. Did the people realize that cases were not needed and got rid of them? Also, why don't people "fix" their language when it comes to genders? Wouldn't it be easier in German to make "das, die , der" just plain "die"? Do you really need to change the ending of "understand" four different times? I mean come on, what's with that? I am by no means a linguist, but it just seems to me that there is a lot of unnecessary stuff in European languages. It also seems like the "newer" languages like English and Afrikaans tried to get rid of the "silly" stuff like genders and cases. Edited by ColdBlue on 26 November 2006 at 10:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7032 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 2 of 39 27 November 2006 at 12:06am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It might not make any sense to a native English speaker, but it probably makes perfect sense to a German or Russian. In fact, they might think English would be better off *with* genders.
I don't think it was an intentional plan. Languages evolve over time. English is really a mixture of a lot of older languages and not really all that new. With a little study you can read centuries-old Shakespearean English without much trouble. Middle English from Chaucer's time is not much more difficult.
Why don't we "fix" English to make it more in line with German or Russian? What should a language be like? Maybe English should add several levels of politeness like Japanese?
Part of the enjoyment of learning another language is getting a different world view. It allows you to get an idea how different cultures think and perceive the world. It would be really boring if learning another language was just substituting new vocabulary for English words and using English syntax and grammar. You should check out one of these other languages for a while to see what you think. Its fun! Edited by orion on 27 November 2006 at 12:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| justinwilliams Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6700 days ago 321 posts - 327 votes 3 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Italian | Message 3 of 39 27 November 2006 at 12:36am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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We get the idea I guess but there are better and more appropriate ways to express your thoughts. English hasn't 'got rid' of a 'useless' non-phonetic spelling yet I believe since I can't fathom what you meant by phantom. It sure is easier to have no gender but like it's been said you get used to it. I can't just figure out why a dog is 'it'! The perfect (meaning easiest in that case) language doesn't exist and it will probably never do. It's to address these issues that people tried to create some artificial languages. Edited by justinwilliams on 27 November 2006 at 12:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| MeshGearFox Senior Member United States Joined 6706 days ago 316 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 4 of 39 27 November 2006 at 12:38am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Genders aren't useless. They serve the purpose of tying certain elements of a sentence together. Namely, adjectives to the nouns. Genders can apparently be a lot of things, though, and I'm not sure how they're all classified.
In Russian, for instance, nouns have regular endings -- Null and soft sign for masculine, o, yo, and ye for neuter, and a/ya and soft sign for feminine. The linking aspect of the genders here makes a lot of sense by creating a sort of sound pattern with the sentence. A sort of harmony, I guess. In English, I guess you could also consider the a/an difference to be a sort of gender. I doubt this is really proper thinking, but it's something amusing to consider. Also, there are some languages with a lot of genders, and these genders actually relate to the type of object you're talking about. I've also heard of Japanese having genders in regards to the various way counting numbers take different endings depending on what you're counting. Anyway, I'm sure German will get rid of cases as soon as English adopts a spelling that is both consistent, regular, AND good looking. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6779 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 39 27 November 2006 at 4:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes, counting/categorization systems like that of Japanese are quite a bit like gender, and it does add a certain amount of disasmbiguation when used properly.
Brilliant! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| RogueRook Diglot Senior Member Germany N/A Joined 6843 days ago 174 posts - 177 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Hungarian, Turkish | Message 6 of 39 27 November 2006 at 6:05am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You are confusing grammatical gender with biological sex. There is some overlap between the two, but in general they are something different. Nobody speaking a language with genders would think of the items you mentioned as boy or girl. If I hear "Die Tür" I don't think the door is a woman. The question why languages have gender is unanswerable I guess. I am pretty sure Proto-Indo-European was a gender-based language and maybe the distinction initially went along the lines animate-inanimate. You have to take a language as it is. They raison d'etre of certain properties of it cannot be answered by todays native speakers because they didn't "invent" the language they speak today. The origins of language are lost for scientific inquiry, dating back thousands of years, maybe tens of thousands. Minor addendum: The languages I currently study (Turkish and Hungarian) don't have gender at all. There isn't even a "he and she", just one pronoun for the 3rd person. It is impossible to explain why this is and all the more futile to ask the question in the first place. P.S. You being new to this place I shouldn't be going hard on you and this isn't a flame but please keep in mind that your calling gender useless and silly makes you appear as a pompous ignorant to some. I guess you didn't mean harm though, you merely couldn't "phantom"( or rather fathom?) the effect of your foolish twaddle and the renunciatory reactions it was bound to incite. Edited by RogueRook on 27 November 2006 at 6:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Walshy Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6953 days ago 335 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German | Message 7 of 39 27 November 2006 at 7:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
When one sees that on a forum, it pretty much guarantees that a flame is coming.
Oh yeah, there it is. If you're that offended by something someone posts here, take a breather, there's no need to reply in that manner. Oh, and since we are being picky, the noun is 'ignoramus'. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6593 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 8 of 39 27 November 2006 at 7:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Being a native speaker of a language with two genders (neither of which is male or female, but rather two different "it"), Swedish, I of course have no problem with genders in my own language. When I hear a new noun, I will automatically know which gender it has, without anyone telling me. So for native speakers, getting rid of the gender wouldn't actually make it any easier to speak. That would just be to accomodate for foreigners learning the language. And changing your mother tongue to make it easier for others just won't happen.
This is something people don't think about that much. Mandarin is the same. English does have genders, and a Mandarin speaker learning English will most likely wonder why the hell you need a difference between "him" and "her" (or indeed "he" and "him"). They're both people, why not just say "that person"? If it's neccessary to define the gender, you could say "that female person", just like you say "that red car". Hell, having different pronouns is probably sexist. The way I see it, languages evolve all the time -- they change with the times and the people who speak them. That's why the most common nouns are usually irregular (Hey, English, make like the Swedes and get rid of the am, is, are). You shorten it down because it's more convenient to say it this way. English got almost rid of genders because the speakers found it tiresome and unneccessary. French speakers had different needs for their language and chose to keep the genders. Any language will adapt to the way it's used, always. That means that genders in gender-based languages are by no means redundant. If they were, they wouldn't still be there! It's the law of evolution, survival of the fittest. It's like asking why dogs have tails. Evidently they're good for something, otherwise they wouldn't be there. Edited by Ari on 27 November 2006 at 7:47am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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