136

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] maynarkh@feddit.nl 3 points 10 months ago

it takes a very narrow set of circumstances to facilitate the conditions where a group might naturally innovate genderless communication.

Do you know more about how does that work with languages that have had no gender to begin with? Hungarian for example has had no gendered nouns or pronouns for the past millennia.

[-] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If other Uralic languages are genderless I'd imagine it's just always been that way as far as can be reconstructed, otherwise I'd need to know more about the development of the Hungarian language from before the conquest of the Pannonian basin, because I'd imagine that you'd find the answers there if at all.

I also don't presume that genderless language has to evolve from gendered language, I was just pointing out that that's how it happened with English, a lot of east asian languages don't have grammatical gender for example and I'm like 99% sure that happened without a Danelaw scenario necessitating it to avoid fights breaking out over misgendering the nice silk everyone was admiring.

this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
136 points (100.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36186 readers
1084 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS