Gendered languages just don't seem that efficient.

[just Warren]

So I'm doing Duolingo's Spanish course (35 day streak!) and the masculine/feminine stuff still trips me up.

Why the hell is 'meat' feminine? Yet coffee is masculine?

These distinctions may add a certain amount of character to a language but are they actually useful?

It makes it harder to grasp the language and a lot easier to make mistakes when speaking.

Also I've seen online where people mock English because, say compared to Finnish, it's super-easy. Well, don't you want an easy language? One that is easy enough it is one of the most spoken languages in the world and one that is the premiere business language? Or, with no justification, you can think highly of your Scandi-barbarian grunt-grunt patois that no one outside of your miserable snow-infested wasteland speaks.

One of the best things about English is that it will absorb most anything. We'll steal words from anyone and just jam them on into the lexicon with no worries at all. And they almost always fit and don't affect how we express ourselves. In other languages when they've grabbed one of our words it really stands out. Just ruins the flow. Like reading some text and the font and size have suddenly changed!

[zahc]

Of course it's efficient. You basically need half as many nouns if you have 2 genders.

It's something that you get used to. It's a common feature so you just have to learn to always learn the word as gendered from the beginning and not think of it as a separate thing. English is the exception.

It could be worse; Japanese has dozens or maybe hundreds of noun classes which you have to know in order to express number (they call them classes instead of genders once there are more than 3 or 4 of them), and what's worse, there are no articles in the language so it's not a given that you know the class from hearing a word used. I mean once you hear "la mesa" you know mesa is feminine. "Das Madchen" is unexpected, but you get it the first time. But in Japanese you could hear the word for rabbit used a hundred times before you figure out it belongs to the same class with birds, and not the same class as other animals.

[Hawkmoon]

So I'm doing Duolingo's Spanish course (35 day streak!) and the masculine/feminine stuff still trips me up.

Why the hell is 'meat' feminine? Yet coffee is masculine?

These distinctions may add a certain amount of character to a language but are they actually useful?

Wait -- it gets worse. When I took French in high school, the rule was that masculine nouns take the masculine article, "le," and feminine nouns take the feminine article, "la." Words ending in 'a' are feminine. Simple.

"La plume de ma tante es sur le bureau de mon oncle Jean."

That's theoretically the rule in Spanish, too ... except that nobody told the Spaniards. There seem to be more exceptions than there are words that adhere to the rule, and there's no way to learn it except by rote memory.

Example: "problem" in Spanish is "el problema" -- masculine.

[freakazoid]

I've never understood the purpose behind "masculine" and "feminine" words.

Of course it's efficient. You basically need half as many nouns if you have 2 genders.

It's something that you get used to. It's a common feature so you just have to learn to always learn the word as gendered from the beginning and not think of it as a separate thing. English is the exception.

It could be worse; Japanese has dozens or maybe hundreds of noun classes which you have to know in order to express number (they call them classes instead of genders once there are more than 3 or 4 of them), and what's worse, there are no articles in the language so it's not a given that you know the class from hearing a word used. I mean once you hear "la mesa" you know mesa is feminine. "Das Madchen" is unexpected, but you get it the first time. But in Japanese you could hear the word for rabbit used a hundred times before you figure out it belongs to the same class with birds, and not the same class as other animals.

Yes. Their counting system is weird. Depending on what it is you would use different words for numbers, called counter words. Or when telling time the word for minutes is changed depending on the minute. For example, 1,3,4,6, and 8 you say "pun", and 2,5,7, and 9 you say "fun". And to make it fun the numbers also change. Like for some things 4 is "shi", except when telling time it becomes "yon".

[just Warren]

Of course it's efficient. You basically need half as many nouns if you have 2 genders.

I am not a cunning linguist as I do not understand your langualgerbra.

[Kingcreek]

What if a feminin noun identifies as masculine?
Hmmm?
Why is mustache a feminin noun in francais? Do French women grow better facial hair than the men?

[lee n. field]

So I'm doing Duolingo's Spanish course (35 day streak!) and the masculine/feminine stuff still trips me up.

Why the hell is 'meat' feminine? Yet coffee is masculine?

And there's "policia", available in both masculine and feminine.

These distinctions may add a certain amount of character to a language but are they actually useful?

It makes it harder to grasp the language and a lot easier to make mistakes when speaking.

Also I've seen online where people mock English because, say compared to Finnish, it's super-easy.

Somewhere I read that Latvian is worse.

[230RN]

I guess that's what makes one "fluent" -- the ability to use correct cases and genders just from imitation and lower memory rather than "googling" through your cortical memory system for the correct structure.

Kind of like typing.  If you ask me where the "B" key is on the keyboard, I could not tell you without poising my fingers in the air and pretending to type out Bad Boy or something like that.

"Oh, it's down here near the space bar !"

I don't hearken back to the days in typing school when I went "home key F, down and to the right for B, back to home key F."

I guess that's called "muscle memory" and I guess there's also a speaking memory that's not really a part of direct cerebral cortex storage and retrieval.

Just like a walking memory.  You don't tell individual leg muscles to operate in thus-and-so sequence to get from here to there.  You just decide to walk.

Hmmmn... that even sounds flaky to me, but I think I touched on the nature of the problem.

Hell.  It's 8 AM and I just woke up and I only had half a cup of coffee so far and I'm ignoring my advice to myself that says, "NO ONE-CUP POSTS !"

Oh, and I don't think "efficiency" has anything to do with the development of languages.  Has more to do with Genesis 11: 1-9 than anything else.    

Hmmm.  I gotta play with that one for a while in terms of the world wide net.

Terry guzzles down the rest of that first cup.  

REF (playful):
https://youtu.be/XFayFUiyv20 (2:31)

[makattak]

Words having masculine and feminine allow you to quickly know which adjective goes with wbich noun, and makes word order less important.

These languages can look at ours and wonder why you have to put the adjective right before the noun.

[Doggy Daddy]

Words having masculine and feminine allow you to quickly know which adjective goes with wbich noun, and makes word order less important.

These languages can look at ours and wonder why you have to put the adjective right before the noun.

Then there's Latin, where you can damn near put the words in a blender.
 

[BlueStarLizzard]

At least Spanish and French are fairly consistent about grammar rules.

You could always try German. 

[Hawkmoon]

Then there's Latin, where you can damn near put the words in a blender.
 

True.

I had two years of Latin in high school. Any time the teacher was out of the room, someone in the class would write on the blackboard (we still had blackboards when I was in high school!), "WORD LATIN NOTHING ORDER MEANS IN" or any other random assemblage of the same words.

[Hawkmoon]

At least Spanish and French are fairly consistent about grammar rules.

My Spanish-English dictionary has nine pages (in small type) devoted to irregular verbs. Naturally, most of them are the verbs used most frequently in daily conversation.

[zxcvbob]

Words having masculine and feminine allow you to quickly know which adjective goes with which noun, and makes word order less important.

These languages can look at ours and wonder why you have to put the adjective right before the noun.

That's what my dad says; he grew up in a German community in central Texas in the 1930's.  I assume his home mostly spoke German when he was a child.  (I don't think he speaks any German now, but he remembers it)

[230RN]

....

These languages can look at ours and wonder why you have to put the adjective right before the noun.

And I, in German, at the end wonder why the verb must to put.

[zxcvbob]

Throw the horse over the fence some hay. 

[zahc]

https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html

It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and of the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has even got into its Eye, and it cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm. And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a Fin, she holds her in her Mouth -- will she swallow her? No, the Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and rescues the Fin -- which he eats, himself, as his Reward. O, horror, the Lightning has struck the Fish-basket; he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how she licks the doomed Utensil with her red and angry Tongue; now she attacks the helpless Fishwife's Foot -- she burns him up, all but the big Toe, and even she is partly consumed; and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery Tongues; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys it; she attacks its Hand and destroys her also; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys her also; she attacks its Body and consumes him; she wreathes herself about its Heart and it is consumed; next about its Breast, and in a Moment she is a Cinder; now she reaches its Neck -- he goes; now its Chin -- it goes; now its Nose -- she goes. In another Moment, except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more. Time presses -- is there none to succor and save? Yes! Joy, joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas, the generous she-Female is too late: where now is the fated Fishwife? It has ceased from its Sufferings, it has gone to a better Land; all that is left of it for its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear him to his long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises again it will be a Realm where he will have one good square responsible Sex, and have it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted Sexes scattered all over him in Spots.

[230RN]

Whew!  And I thought I was having fun by using "Him got he !" when referring to a long throw from the outfield to put out a base runner.

BTW, I thought all nouns incorporated into Spanish from other languages were automatically handled as feminine.

And I reckon the French partly solved the problem by using l' a lot.

Terry

[TechMan]

At least Spanish and French are fairly consistent about grammar rules.

You could always try German. 

Spawn #1 is in a German language school (K-6.)  It is fun.

[Ben]

My cousins are all pretty much in agreement that learning German as a foreign language would not be a piece of cake. They all thought learning English was relatively easy.

I still get my genders mixed up to the amusement of all my relatives. I think mostly from having learned German unofficially, at home, and then only speaking it when I was forced to. Well, except for the every Saturday German Club school me and all the other first gen kids got sent to for a few years, but  I spent a good portion of many Saturdays locked in a utility closet thanks to Frau buchenstozenkuchen, who would have made a good Gestapo officer.

[230RN]

Frau Buchenstozenkuchen

https://youtu.be/yCkSJhCD6SA (0:16)

[just Warren]

And here's an article I just found talking about efficiency in languages.

It's not a great article but I was surprised to see someone else had been thinking along the same lines as me.

[RoadKingLarry]

True.

I had two years of Latin in high school. Any time the teacher was out of the room, someone in the class would write on the blackboard (we still had blackboards when I was in high school!), "WORD LATIN NOTHING ORDER MEANS IN" or any other random assemblage of the same words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lczHvB3Y9s

[Angel Eyes]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lczHvB3Y9s

I knew it . . . I knew it . . .

[Hawkmoon]

https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html

I say to myself, "Regen (rain) is masculine -- or maybe it is feminine -- or possibly neuter -- it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either der (the) Regen, or die (the) Regen, or das (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well -- then the rain is der Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussion -- Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something -- that is, resting (which is one of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively, -- it is falling -- to interfere with the bird, likely -- and this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing dem Regen into den Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) den Regen." Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the Genitive case, regardless of consequences -- and that therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des Regens."

Sounds about like my struggle to [fail to] learn Spanish.