Re:Why Arabic Is Terrific (2011)
by Arete314159 on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @04:28PM
(#20288806)
Yes for the "groups of women" part, but no for the dual formation. So for Spanish you have to learn masculine singular and plural, feminine singular and plural, but not masculine dual and feminine dual.
AFAIK they (in Arabic) also have dual pronouns which refers to exactly two people; they use another pronoun for 3+ people.
Which language? Spanish doesn't.
I meant Arabic.
Re:Why Arabic Is Terrific (2011)
by dhruvparamhans on Thursday June 27, 2019 @04:05AM
(#20292540)
If I remember my Sanskrit correctly, it too has duals. But not specifically gendered duals. So two of them are going is written the same way irrespective of whether "the two" are male or female or neutral.
Yeah Sanskrit has a neutral as well. Makes the language much simpler. (In my opinion) .
> Formal Arabic distinguishes between groups composed entirely of women and groups that contain one or more men, and has distinct pronouns, plural forms, and verb conjugations for feminine dual and feminine plural.
> This gives Arabic a total of twelve personal pronouns. No other language will make you work as hard to avoid speaking formally to pairs of women.
All Romance languages I know (French, Spanish, Portuguese) work like that. For example in Portuguese: "They play football." is "Elas jogam futebol." if it's about the women's national soccer team but "Eles jogam futebol." if it's an all male or mixed team.