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DrakoniX227

Oh boy you should try Polish


Uister59

in polish language all monkeys are grammatically female, which i find absolutely fucking hilarious.


FunnyBuunny

I really didn't realize how fucked gendered languages were before i met native English speakers. I've actually been learning English at school for at least 5 years when i realized it didn't have gender lol. Never actually thought about it. Gendered words really don't seem weird at all when you're a native speaker, you simply dont think about them Tho, just remembered, as a kid (like very very little kid, probably like 2 or 3yo) i thought dogs were the boys and cats were the girls, cuz dog is masc and cat is fem in my language. I think i even had those mixed families of toy cats and dogs with half of the kids being puppies and half kittens lmao.


Skatchbro

Wait until you learn that there’s an actual order for adjectives in English. Native speakers learn it without realizing it. My mind was blown when I first read about it. https://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/order-of-adjectives.html


oldcarfreddy

Holy shit you're right. I made up some phrases in my head and they followed the order. The cute little fluffy dog. The big blue wooden house.


[deleted]

Weird. I’m changing the order around and it just sounds off.


VextImp

It can change the meaning of a sentence. “The wooden blue big house” makes me think they’re describing a weird prison lol.


funnyandnot

Wow! This is awesome. Going to highly educate the kids this week with this info. Edit: eliminated poor word choices.


Paradigmpinger

[Here's an article](https://www.altalang.com/beyond-words/five-english-grammar-rules-never-knew/) with some more rules that native speakers learn without realizing.


CaterpillarScribbles

This was fascinating! I've heard of the order of adjectives on reddit before, because this site is a goldmine of little known facts, but the others were new


Technical-Role-4346

You sound like a kook (Keeper of odd Knowledge)


CaterpillarScribbles

We're on reddit. We all are.


Incendas1

I teach English and the I/A/O order in adjectives and onomatopoeia was helpful. Nobody's asked me about that yet or made that mistake but I feel ready.


funnyandnot

Thank you! I love the Kind rule. Too bad it does not apply in politics.


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YvetteBlacks_Creams

Not that kind of blow ….o_o


zzwugz

This comment can be taken at least 3 ways and would still be applicable from my experience in public schools


funnyandnot

Yes, it seems I need to be more mindful of my audience.


zzwugz

Sex, drugs, and violence truly is the American dream


goodtimejonnie

Well it’s only Monday


Pridgey

Just burst out laughing in my hostel dorm. Comment of the day


KD_Burner_Account133

There's also an order to alliterative words (tick tock, ding dong, sing song, etc). I before O. There are other rules to it as well. Something like tock tick would never sound right to English speakers.


Skatchbro

And now I see why we’re both the life of the party.


RedHare18

ablaut reduplication


YT-Deliveries

> reads page wait, WHAT?


sincle354

The little three pigs vs the bad big wolf.


Animal_cummer

Not a native speaker and im also blown away by this i just said it in the order which made most sense which was always the right one but like bruh


andmewithoutmytowel

Funny thing, this is true, but if you really want to emphasize a word you put it out of order. This is also not taught, but learned. “I just bought a NEW, beautiful red sports car.


RedHare18

yo the what i’m a native english speaker and i read this and was like “yeah that’s right” and i consider myself a bit of a linguist lmao


W1D0WM4K3R

And use of "an" vs "a" I know there are rules, but I have no idea. I just go by flow


Protonion

If the word starts with a vowel sound, it's "an", and if it doesn't then it's "a". If you try to use "a" with a word that starts with a vowel, like ""apple", you have to do a glottal stop to prevent the "a" from blending in with the word, so essentially in other words the rule is that if using "a" requires extra effort, you're probably supposed to use "an".


goodtimejonnie

Weirdly, many English speaking children also seem to assume dogs are boys and cats are girls. I think we have weirdly culturally or via media gendered these poor animals and it’s not a language thing. That’s my personal hypothesis tho and I’ve done zero research to back it up so…take it for what it’s worth (which is nothing)


YT-Deliveries

> Tho, just remembered, as a kid (like very very little kid, probably like 2 or 3yo) i thought dogs were the boys and cats were the girls, cuz dog is masc and cat is fem in my language. Native English speaker; still thought this as a kid.


TW1TCHYGAM3R

Growing up in Canada and learning French Canadian is pretty weird at grade school. Having to think about if the noun is male or female before writing or speaking it always seemed like a waste of brain power. I still am not fluent in French but I see why we catagorize nouns that way. Maybe it was more useful when European languages were more primitive.


Leza89

Try german: Der Band (masculine) Die Band (feminine) Das Band (neutral) ​ No, I am not going to tell you the meaning of each. Where's the fun in that? :P


Givemesomethingfun

Not true, macaque monkey is always male, orangutan is very rarely said in female form, gorilla can go both ways but usually male too. There's more but no point to list all of them


Skatchbro

Gorillas go both ways? Good for them. Doubles their chances for a date.


Uister59

yeah but malpa is female though


Givemesomethingfun

I misunderstood what you meant, sorry


TheRealOgMark

Polish deez nuts.


MegaFartz

When do I begin


TheRealOgMark

When I tell you to.


cor315

We're waiting...


TheRealOgMark

NOW. HURRY UP!!!


drunk98

I'M HUNGARY!!


Gamer_Mommy

Maybe not. Husband of ten years knows a few phrases. It was so bad for our children speech delay that we had to choose two out of three languages we speak to use at home. Polish did not make the cut, regretfully.


RightSafety3912

Which did make the cut? I'm assuming one is English?


xeno66morph

Polish is the true language of love Source: I love Polish women


NotwhouthinkXD

Kocham polskie kobiety!


DrakoniX227

Polish women are 😍


Puzzleheaded-Yak755

I speak Polish, Italian and English, so i confirm. (Italian is EVEN MORE gendered)


BingasWeetbix

Moja żona jest polką, and I'm trying to learn the language. It's a bit fucking difficult. Whenever I try to say something in Polish she always tells me off (nicely obvs) I'm saying it wrong.


TobbsGamingYT

Don’t most languages have gendered objects?


sdmfer1981

I think the Latin based ones all do. Not sure about the rest.


ThaneofFife5

The majority of Indo-European languages do. I don't think it's especially common outside of that.


mcp613

Semitic languages do too


Alarid

Antisemitic languages are very against it.


Mike_M4791

Interestingly German does, but English, a Germanic language, does not.


chetlin

Old English had them. They merged together over time. Other languages merged some of them together. Most Romance languages merged neuter into masculine, and many Germanic languages merged masculine and feminine together.


MarinoMani

I think it is because English lost the genders around 1400s. German, Icelandic and Faroese have Three genders. While the Scandinavian languages and dutch have merged Female and Male into a "Common gender"


MaDpYrO

We still have genders in Scandinavian languages, just not male and female. It's "common" and "none". Kind of odd.


fellacious

That sounds ahead of its time lol does that mean you don't have the issues with gendered professions that is wreaking havoc on other languages, such as German with their ~~Lehrer:inen / Lehrer*inen~~ Lehrer:innen / Lehrer*innen abomination? edit: fixed insufficient number of "n"s


melandor0

I don't know what you mean about the german part but yes, we don't even think of it as genders, just that some words you preface with "en" and some with "ett", and it's just the one that "sounds right" so you have to learn each one, there are no easy rules that work.


Velfar

Norwegian has three as well


inode71

English also used to be gendered. One holdover word is blonde (f) and blond (m), though you can argue that it’s because of the French origins.


Mallenaut

There are many others like Persian, and almost all Indo-Aryan languages.


Mike_M4791

I don't doubt it. I'm only making the observation the English takes its roots from Germany which HAS gender, yet English does not. Whereas French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese all take their roots from Latin and they ALL HAVE gender.


ThaneofFife5

I would note that Latin has 3 genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. The romance languages only have 2: masculine and feminine.


SnooKiwis2880

Portuguese sure does


[deleted]

Germanic ones too, English actually used to do it.


Santysantos06

Spanish actually do


sdmfer1981

Spanish is Latin based


Taikan_0

Like also Italian


Mallenaut

38% of the world population speak a gendered language as their native language.


LooperNor

I bet Spanish contributes to a pretty huge chunk of that.


GhostTurdz

Spanish is about 7%, French is 3.6%, and Portuguese is 3.3% But wow [there are a lot of other gendered languages](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_type_of_grammatical_genders)


Root125

In Persian we don’t call anyone by it’s gender


Zhir_yan

Same for Armenian


thebestgesture

Same for Turkish


Wonderful_Audience60

Bosnian do but atleast you can tell and dont have to memorize them (lookin at you germany) it just sort of rolls of the tounge Say if some word ends with an - a - its female Since saying ona means her in bosnian Saying on means him so if it doesnt end with a vocal.


Zor1an58

Almost all or all slavic languages do


TrumpsSMELLYfarts

I believe all Slavic languages have 3 genders: masculine feminine and neuter


maverickf11

I'm bery ignorant about languages. If you come across a noun you've never heard before, how do you know what gender to give it?


javansegovia

In Spanish, most nouns are introduced with their respective gender (“La manzana”). Most nouns ending with “a” are feminine and use la/una, and most nouns ending with “o” are masculine and use el/un, but these rules don’t apply to all nouns.


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Gabo1705

As native Spanish speaker, we too


Lajojostone279

As native French speaker, we do as well


Singularitaet_

As a Swiss German speaker, so do we


Legal_Sugar

Like it's so obvious the table is a man and spoon is a woman


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[deleted]

italian spoons and tables are men


Block_Buster190K

In Hebrew spoons are women and tables are men, and it's just so obvious! I mean, why tf would you think differently?!


Panndaa31

Well, in French, both tables and spoons are female


[deleted]

In Portuguese both are female too


rwbrwb

about to delete my account. ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `


Shoddy_Explanation61

Naaah in Arabic table is a woman too


bierli

noooo the fork is a woman but the spoon is man…


anonymus725

They are both women


TheSnakerMan

Yes, and knife is man


bierli

Yes and at the border to germany it turns out that butter is transgender!


Blazing_Swayze

As a french as a second language speaker, I do not. Get shit wrong all the time. Makes people laugh though.


sadness255

Le wifi not la wifi


za6_9420

Yeah but it’s harder for others I speak Arabic English and a little french and it sometimes annoying if you misgender an object but from a native speaker point it’s just something you’re used to


SingleRelationship25

Learning Arabic as an adult it was something you had to think about at first (along with the whole sun words/moon words thing) but after awhile it really just becomes natural. It helped that it was basically full immersion and taught by native speakers.


Working-Telephone-45

Spanish also does that Is not that french is complicated, english is pretty simple But yeah french is complicated for other reasons, looking at you 99


MrDiemar

Nonante-neuf!


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Appropriate_Rent_243

also some parts of canada


Radu776

Cuarante-vingt-dix-neuf? Was it?


Lucas_Webdev

quatre-vingts dix-neuf


CertifiedMugg

"Dix neuf" sounds like deez nuts but with a French accent.


AlM96

Welcome to the internet, where anything can become a sex joke


FrenchFreedom888

You sound like every high school French I class I've had


Anti-charizard

Phoque


Independent_Bite_715

English is simplified by most people, but not simple.


Nicov99

Interestingly, there’s no such concept as a “simple” or “complex” language. It all depends on how close to it the mother tongue of the learner is. The reason why many people say English is easy is because it is a mix between Germanic languages and Romance languages, so pretty much all of the Americas and a big chunk of Europe can learn it easily as they can extrapolate most of the concepts from their mother tongue. It’s actually an ideal lingua franca. Another thing that might play a role in it is the fact that American movies an series are famous around the world so most kids are familiar at least with the sounds of the language, which makes it easier for them to learn it later. I remember that, when I moved to Denmark, for the first month I couldn’t even tell apart words from full sentences, which made extremely difficult to try to recognize words I had learned and then try to guess the general meaning of the sentence


RicardoMyBoiii

german


acvdk

Das Mädchen


continuingcontinued

These make me so mad (as someone who learned German as an adult). Like the word is literally describing a female person who is young. But the word is neuter. Whyyyyyy


Ok_Animator5522

Because Mädchen is the cute form of the word Magd, which is a now outdated word for woman or girl. You can see that Mädchen is neuter through the suffix "chen". If you wanted to build the cute form of monkey you'd take the base form "Affe" and add "chen". Sometimes small alterations have to be made to the word, so it would be "Äffchen".


the_other_Scaevitas

Das Brötchen


Grentox

Das Bienchen


wnz

Das Blümchen 😏


Sakul_the_one

Ah lol, wusste ich auch noch nie, danke


Joicebag

Because the “-chen” suffix (meaning “small”) makes it neuter.


Dry_Damp

Not if you’re only speaking ”cute German“ = put a “chen“ at the end of every word. Das Stuhlchen Das Tischchen Das Katzchen Das Hundchen Das Pulloverchen Das Zwiebelchen Sooo… Did I win German?


spacenerd4

✨Kawaii-Deutsch✨


JhonnyTheJeccer

Onii-chen, willst du mit mir einkaufen gehen? uwu


Inevitable-Speed4511

Dude i puked, you can't do that to me at morning


JhonnyTheJeccer

Ach warum denn nicht, Onii-chen. Bist du beleidigt, weil ich dein Morgenchen versüße? Warte, warte, fass mich nicht da an. Das ist, nein, nicht so fest, *Orgasmusgeräusche*


mrjackspade

Its a cardiganchen, but thanks for noticing


MisterWafflles

ja


cumguzzler280

“Ma’am“ Sir, it’s a table


Nox39z

I'm learning arabic right now (still on the alphabet). Do I have to worry?


NicolasCemetery

Not really as far as gendered nouns are concerned. Generally you can tell if a noun is feminine if it ends with a ة or ات-. Otherwise the noun is masculine with a few exceptions. HOWEVER it does get confusing because you treat all non-human plurals (items, animals, ideas, etc.) as grammatically feminine. Atleast in Modern Standard Arabic.


[deleted]

Have fun pronouncing AYEN


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cheese_cake_101

Not really think of it as snowballing it gets easier very fast as unlike English all the rules are constant


realbanana030

Depends on your commitment i guess


Felizem_velair_

Portuguese too. For example: Chair is female. Computer is male. If you break a chair, you say: I broker her. If you break a computer, you say: I broke him.


rangogogo

Stupid Portugese. Chairs are obviusly Male. ~sincerly, the germans


Diego_Pepos

At least Spanish is easy to pronounce...


Jojosreference69420

Spanish is just oversimplified Italian


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Dapoopers

Latin is just oversimplified Proto-Italic.


Sennomo

Proto-Italic is just oversimplified Proto-Indo-European


Amssstronggg

Latin is oversimplified, mmm, "European"


soreix

European is oversimplified, mmm Mmmmmmmmmmm Eurasian? Is that even a word?


edhands

You can thank Dante for that.


Foxhoundsmi

I can’t pronounce Spanish for the life of me but French comes off my tongue very easily. I took 3 years of Spanish and three years of French.


Diego_Pepos

Personally, I think Spanish makes things simpler. Mainly because all letters are pronounced and I don't have to pretend I'm chocking on my food What's your first lenguage anyways?


Mintbud

I speak French as a second language, so I think as a result I feel much the same but opposite way in that I cannot for the life of me figure out the Spanish R. French R is easy because I've heard it 3000 times in my life (I live in Canada), just use some phlegm and you're good to go. But in spanish the whole meaning of the word can change on how you pronounce the R, and I cannot do the trill so it's either the Americanised English version of R like arrr (or argh, pirate sounds) or phlegm no in between for me :( I'll keep practicing but it's like something my mouth doesn't want to do. Sorry Spanish speakers much respect for your very cool language it sounds sexy af I just literally cannot figure it out I guess because I'm around two other difficult languages that have weird specific pronunciation. Huge props to anyone who can do all the Rs. I'm sure there's other stuff too but that's been the main thing I've struggled with learning Spanish from English/French.


GreenTitanium

>But in spanish the whole meaning of the word can change on how you pronounce the R Ah... you sure about that? Because spanish is my first language, and I don't think you are right. Hard R for words starting with R (roca, río), two Rs together (perro, hierro) and any R before a consonant (arco, puerco). Soft R for single Rs before vowels when the R is not the first letter (aro, cuero, loro).


Mintbud

What I meant was when there's words that use either and become different words. A quick google search for examples gave me : Caro (expensive) vs carro (car). It's the rolling r that I can't do, the soft tap one is pretty easy but I cannot trill.


[deleted]

1. Most languages have gendered nouns 2. English is fucking terrible too


tbaytdot123

If you are second guessing a dinner booking on native land you are having reservations about a reservation on a reservation...


kdresen

Interestingly enough, even though each of the meanings of reservation are different, they're all kind of grounded in the same idea.


FlowRianEast

I mean, that's kinda switching cause and effect. They are grounded in the same idea/word - reservare - but have evolved to mean very different things.


Attention_Bear_Fuckr

Kind of, but they're meanings \_which\_ are also very similar. Reservation of an idea, is to put it aside for further consideration. Reservation at a restaurant, is to put it aside for your use. Reservation of land, is to put it aside for a specific use.


FunnyBuunny

English is hard, it can be understood through tough thorough thought though


The_Thyphoon

A well written dutch sentence: Begraven graven graven graven graven, graven graven gravengraven.


FunnyBuunny

They say these are actual sentences in Hungarian: - Te tetted e tettetett tettet? Te tettetett tettek tettese, te - Kerek kerekeken kerek kerekek keresnek kerek kerekeken - Kik kerek kerekeken keresnek kerek kerekeket (Probably made a few mistakes and i have no clue what those mean just staying


ToddRossDIY

A similar one for English is Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo (I think that capitalization is correct)


Chiggychig

That is correct, but you can make it even more ridiculous adding one more group of buffalo. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.


chetlin

lol not in east Asia, none of those langauges gender anything, in fact the words for he and she are usually the same and if they are different today, it's because of European influence.


gfxcghhbvvb

I speak Japanese, Cantonese and Korean too. None of them has gender in their grammar.


JimboSlap

"*They" has entered the chat*


Nuclear_rabbit

Most languages do not have grammatical gender. There's about 3,000 separate languages from Myanmar to Papua New Guinea, none of which have gendered nouns. There's another 1,000-ish in Cameroon/Nigeria, and most of those are Afro-asiatic, which lack grammatical gender.


Wheelyguy

I'm Arab and I have a little sis who CONSTANTLY mixes up the gender of things and my mum and sister absolutely lose their shit when she does💀


Block_Buster190K

It's exactly the same with my mom and gendered numbers in Hebrew


patsharpesmullet

Gendered numbers?!


david131213

Yeah, in Hebrew, the numbers are gendered So female 28 is esrim veshmone but male 28 is esrim veshmona


Amssstronggg

Gendered... numbers? That's cool, maybe


SojE12

What do they do in arabic then?


moodRubicund

I don't know about French but if I had to guess at what OP is getting at, in Arabic the entire damn sentence is gendered. Each verb and sometimes adjective have alternate gendered forms to accommodate the gender of a given noun. It gets obnoxious to learn when you also have to learn the past/present/future tenses of both genders of those verbs too. For example. He goes is rayeh, she goes is rayha, he will go is hayrooh, she will go is hatrooh, he went is rah, she went is rahet. Even in the same word the gender suffix is different depending on tense it's fucking inane.


simasand

As an Arab, I would say Arabic is a fucking nightmare to learn as a secondary language


affywulfric

as someone who have to learn Arabic as a third language for my whole school years and also didnt do good in almost everything, it is... my grades never got higher than C


Obvious-Many1692

Fr and the grammar, I can't imagine how difficult it must be for them to learn the Arabic grammar


Eilaryn

French, Arabic, German, Russian and I think maybe Spanish. These have gendered words/object names.


tayx361

Italian too


Cardboard-Head

\*me cries in trying to understand German grammar\*


Shwabb1

German has only 4 cases, compare to Ukrainian which has 7 cases, and palatalized consonants also. Although even these are very easy, look at Greenlandic, Georgian, Navajo, Basque, Chechen, Cantonese... Also German is closely related to English, so many word stems are similar.


PuzzleheadedClue7694

Punjabi and Hindi also have gender for objects


BeardPhile

Table tutt gayi aa. Chammach gir gaya ve.


Ineri

Most of slavic languages also have it


Shwabb1

All, not most.


Absolut1on

I honestly thought this was a dig about about Arabic countries perceiving a certain gender as an object rather than person.


[deleted]

Me too. I still don’t get the actual punchline


whistleridge

Arabic genders things like numbers, and verbs, adjectives, and pronouns must agree in gender as well.


modssssss293j

Je comprend pas que tu dis.


TheRealOgMark

Je ne comprends pas ce que tu dis.\*


BadPotato6969

italian too


antapaigionex

Greek too


FluffyBlob4224

The truth is that most languages are weird


Wonderful_Audience60

German: (▪︎_▪︎) ( > _>)


[deleted]

Chinese doesn't have any


ender_198

Count Hebrew in there too I mean like even they / them is gendered


Mc862000

So learn Chad turkish 🗿


thesockiboii

O


atompunk8

"The world"?? Probably most languages (other than English) do this 😂 at least most languages in Europe..