The Evils of Feminine Gender (and Other Language Complaints)

[Ian Booton]

This isn't so much a quirk of the language itself, but there's almost nothing in Latin that could be considered "Intermediate" in its difficulty. I mean you go from very basic stuff like learners and small quotes in Latin, and then most programs expect you to be reading high-level poetry as soon as you know just the basics. It's maddening. There is some stuff out there, especially nowadays, like Harrius Potter and Hobbitus Ille, which could I suppose be said to be intermediate, but it's just a bit sparse.

As well, there are very few speakers of Latin, and of those there are fewer who speak with the classical dialect like myself. It's nigh upon impossible to find good audio resources in Classical Latin.

As for the language itself? It's really not that bad. Highly regular with a few exceptions but usually ones that aren't too bad. Even gender is almost not a problem.

Does the word end in -us? It's almost certainly masculine.
Does the word end in -a? It's almost certainly feminine.
Does the word end in -um? It's almost certainly neuter.

There really aren't many exceptions to this rule. Of course, not every word has one of those three endings but many do. The rest you just have to know but it usually kinda makes sense.

The one thing that just gets me every time however, is that in Latin words can come in any order. Any order at all. Think of a sentence that make no sense because the word order is totally wrong. You can do that in Latin. There are hardly any rules. Oh, there are stylistic rules, but the grammar rules are indifferent. It makes reading long, complicated sentences VERY difficult sometimes.

 

[Auberon]

As mentioned, German... remembering each pronoun and word-specific cases. I probably could recall them if I took up courses.

 

[solemnwar]

I can't pronounce the english "th" sound as in three. Which means i usually say tree (which gets confusing) or free (even more confusing).

To be fair, plenty of native English speakers pronounce it that way too. The stereotypical Irish accent would pronounce it 'tree', and those with more cockney influenced accents tend to say 'free'.
I've got a fairly cockney-ish accent but I don't do the th/f thing. Instead I've got the weird South-East 'll' sound. L's after vowels almost turn into W's, so 'will' sounds like 'wiw'. It's very odd.

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At the moment I'm learning Old English, which inflects for case just like German. Modern English basically ignores cases altogether and uses word order instead, so it gets quite confusing.

Not to mention that Old English doesn't have any set spelling either, so you have to read it aloud a few times before it makes sense.

Oh the joys when writers would just write whatever they damned pleased for spelling! We have the printing press and the mass distribution of books to thank for the ending of that, let me tell you. More people started to read, and they started to complain that there wasn't any apparent standard to the spelling of words.

Can you tell I've taken a bunch of 18th/19th century literature classes.

I'm also super jelly that you get to learn Old English It used to be offered at my university but by the time I was able to take it (you needed at least a 2nd year level course as a perquisite) the professor who taught it had retired and it was no longer offered. Closest I got was at the beginning of my Mediaeval English Literature course. I even own a (concise) Anglo-Saxon dictionary.

YES I'M A NERD FOR ENGLISH AND HISTORY.

OT: I am linguistically retarded when it comes to any language other than my own, so uh... I just find languages hard in general. But that might just because I'm lazy as fuck.

 

[Dimitriov]

Snip

Just want to add that I love Latin for it's regularity. Even the irregular verbs mostly follow the same basic pattern as each other, which is only slightly different than regular systems anyway.

I am in my second year of Latin now and it is the first time I have truly enjoyed learning a second language.



I have also taken an intro course on Old English, which I found surprisingly difficult. Seriously, coming from modern English as my first language, Latin is easier and makes more sense than Old English does. It's actually kinda funny.

Also, in case anyone wants to know, Old English did indeed have noun genders (feminine, masculine, and neuter), and it was as messed up as any other language in that regard. For example wif meaning "woman" or "wife" is a neuter noun... and wif-mann meaning "woman" is, naturally, a masculine noun. Glad our language got rid of that crap

Oh the joys when writers would just write whatever they damned pleased for spelling! We have the printing press and the mass distribution of books to thank for the ending of that, let me tell you. More people started to read, and they started to complain that there wasn't any apparent standard to the spelling of words.

Can you tell I've taken a bunch of 18th/19th century literature classes.

I'm also super jelly that you get to learn Old English It used to be offered at my university but by the time I was able to take it (you needed at least a 2nd year level course as a perquisite) the professor who taught it had retired and it was no longer offered. Closest I got was at the beginning of my Mediaeval English Literature course. I even own a (concise) Anglo-Saxon dictionary.

YES I'M A NERD FOR ENGLISH AND HISTORY.

OT: I am linguistically retarded when it comes to any language other than my own, so uh... I just find languages hard in general. But that might just because I'm lazy as fuck.

If you ever get a chance to learn Old English, despite what I wrote above, I would recommend it. It's a weird and very Germanic language, but also quite beautiful. It also helps to clarify, as does Latin, why modern English is the way it is.

The best part of that Old English class, however, was that our textbook was written in 1882...

 

[McKitten]

English grammar is just fucked up. Especially irregular verb conjugation. You seriously have to learn the whole bloody list and all their forms. And don't get me started on the whole mess with auxiliary verbs. French is easy as pie in comparison, even if the whole intonation thing is annoying. And what language teachers don't tell you about German is that people never actually use anything but two tenses.

 

[Erttheking]

The gender in german. Definitely the gender.

It's not even like there's somewhat of an order to it like in spanish. You just have to remember them all and they change based on case. It's horrible

Spoiler

Oh Jesus Christ don't remind me. Every last thing in the German language has a gender or a lack of a gender. Your pencil is a boy, the chalkboard is a girl, the map on the wall is a girl, the table is a boy, and your textbook has no gender? Why? Fuck you that's why, memorize it.

 

[WarZombieMK2]

I have just one complaint about english, one that might be a bit stereotypical for a german.

Flipping "th"; i can't pronounce it correctly when i'm not concentrating on it, when i play a game and use my mic.
I have to try hard to say it right, but i'm fluent otherwise, people never assume i'm german, but then i whip out my "th"
and nobody has to ask anymore.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I'm also super jelly that you get to learn Old English It used to be offered at my university but by the time I was able to take it (you needed at least a 2nd year level course as a perquisite) the professor who taught it had retired and it was no longer offered. Closest I got was at the beginning of my Mediaeval English Literature course. I even own a (concise) Anglo-Saxon dictionary.
.

You could always just teach yourself Old English?

http://www8.georgetown.edu/departments/medieval/labyrinth/library/oe/texts/a3.11.html

Good luck ^^

 

[DanielBrown]

Hm, one I can think of in Swedish is the adjective scared. It only works when you put one of our two words for "a" before it(got no clue what they're called). The Swedish types are either en or ett. Got no clue about the rule for when we use which, since it seems totally random. En katt, ett marsvin(a cat, a guine pig). Ett hus, en bil(a house, a car). Perhaps some Swede who actually paid attention in school knows.

Anyways, you can say "en rädd människa(a scared human)", but you can't say a scared lion since the word scared doesn't bend right. The worlds that magically appear in your mouth becomes "ett rätt lejon", which translated to English means "a correct lion".
To bypass it you gotta change it to "ett lejon som är rädd(a lion that is scared)" or change the word to "skrämt" which is another word for scared. It's mainly used as a verb though.

Hopefully someone understands. I lost myself a few times.

Can also add, like others have, my minor issues with the English language:
I can't pronounce the double t's without struggling. Letter for example sounds the same as leather out of my mouth. Got plenty of double t in Swedish, but I've never had any issues with those.

Was quite annoying trying to give a tourist directions to the building with the golden letters.

 

[BitterLemon]

Before reading this thread, I've never realized how wacky gendered nouns must seem... it's so natural to me that I've had never even thought about it. But I guess the logic of it is that's not the object that have a gender, it's just the word. So feminine and masculine isn't connected with the idea that objects have sex or traits associated with a gender. For latin languages, at least.

Things that I find weird in English:

- Adjectives before nouns. You listen a list of 10 adjectives about something without knowing what the thing is until the end of the phrase. A big blue sturdy classy happy... a what? A WHAT?! A HOUSE?! A WHALE?!
In my native language the noun always comes first, unless you want to sound poetic or... talk in reverse because you're... weird.

- Verbal phrases. The concept doesn't exist in Portuguese, so when you don't realize it's a phrasal verb and translates it literally, the result is a complete crazy sentence. The translation of "She was told to back off" would be "She was told to return deactivated". The only way to get around this is memorizing a long list of phrasal verbs. ;_;

- On, in, at. The rules for using them aren't rocket science, but it's always hard to remember them in a hurry for me. In Portuguese, there's only one word for it: "na/no" (female/male. Depends on the dreaded gender).

- "th" sound. Fucking "th" sound.

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

On, in, at. The rules for using them aren't rocket science, but it's always hard to remember them in a hurry for me. In Portuguese, there's only one word for it: "na/no" (female/male. Depends on the dreaded gender).

What about 'em'? Em português, em casa, em andamento, em posição, ...

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Anyway, I have to say I like gendered words and things, and part of me wishes the English language had them. When you say you have "a friend", for example, that's not enough information, I don't know if your friend is male or female. In portuguese you have 2 words, one for men and one for women, for pretty much everything. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc. Imagine if you had friendos and friendas.