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

  • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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    9 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.

    • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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      9 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.