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The Awful German Language (1880)

(faculty.georgetown.edu)
198 points nalinidash | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.228s | source
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penguin_booze ◴[] No.44004917[source]
I would outlaw noun gendering globally. Does it serve any semantic purpose? It does damn good job at making learning unnecessarily difficult.
replies(3): >>44005070 #>>44005130 #>>44019800 #
1. int_19h ◴[] No.44019800[source]
Wait until you hear about adjective and verb gendering. ~

On a more serious note, it's a backwards compatibility thing. Taking a language with grammatical gender and removing it changes the way it looks and sounds rather drastically - more so for some than others. Needless to say, existing speakers are unlikely to appreciate it even if they don't care for gender qua gender.

(See also: numerous polls on how native Spanish speakers react to "Latinx" etc)