Re:Reasons some languages are harder to learn
by pseudalopex on Sunday May 16, 2021 @07:39PM
(#27178332)
Your point is unclear to me. Gender doesn't mean genre in contemporary English. And context is enough to distinguish grammatical gender from other meanings usually.
Re:Reasons some languages are harder to learn
by hprotagonist on Sunday May 16, 2021 @08:19PM
(#27178651)
except when context is not enough; i.e., when a grammatical gender form applies to nouns that describe persons with social genders.
And then people usually get very huffy about which non-sentient nouns “share” “their” “gender”.
Re:Reasons some languages are harder to learn
by pseudalopex on Sunday May 16, 2021 @09:51PM
(#27179272)
Nouns that describe persons with social genders have matching grammatical genders usually. And you have to distinguish when talking about both at once obviously.
> And then people usually get very huffy about which non-sentient nouns “share” “their” “gender”.
Seems rare to me.
still, the grammatical sense predates the sex sense by a bit, and has always been around to mean “genre”. So you always have to disambiguate usage