You (singular)

i agree with you but
>words have gender
this is useful

I'm not disagreeing with you, but could you explain why having genders is a good thing?

How? Conceivably how? They've just been a pain, they serve no purpose from what I can see.

>who is this person
in english you wouldn't know whether it's female or male unless you add another sentence with she or he
and so forth.

>have expressions which make no sense at all when broken down
>only in French

different spelling and pronunciation, what the issue here?

yeah, sure. but WHY?

it isn't. it's just to confuse people who try to learn it and it makes sure than nobody who's not a native can ever 100% fool people. they always fuck this up because it's impossible to memorize the gender of thousands of words if you haven't internalized it since you were a baby.

Sure, when talking about people it makes sense, but what about other nouns?
Like why is mountain male and hand female, etc? What's the benefit in that?

>who is this man?
>who is this woman?

There you go, and using person is useful if you were trying to be ambiguous. Also only having two genders as the basis for language is extremely problematic and transphobic.

Fair enough, but stuff like that is normally easy to gather what they're talking about from context. Got any other examples?

True, but there are some fucking weird ones in French. Remember trying to decipher some formal ending to a letter, and asked someone about it. Turns out there is no real translation for it, just is something you've got to learn and understand the intent behind. In other words, fuck French due to my recent experiences.

Because they are different words that are written and pronounced differently?

But isn't that the fault of the speaker?

You could rewrite the sentence to: "Who is she?" or "Who is he?" or even "Who are they?"

Fair enough

>le (him)
>le (her)
>le (you)

Not them, but can't tell if you're joking or not about the trans thing. Had someone say this as a joke to a teacher - ended up with a fucking funny fifteen minute lecture on how French ins't transophobic, with her trying so hard to not accidentally say the wrong thing.

To summarise her lecture, gender is just the word we use to describe it. We could call them hot and cold nouns. All that matters if that they're seen as separate, distinct things of the same class.

To be fair, there are usually some onvious give aways for what gender a word is, and that accounts for 80% of the vocabulary. I'm sure even natives fuck up sometimes. English speakers fuck they're own language up all the time.

mountain is female akshually

Formal ending to letters are extremely convoluted because it's basically a peen measuring contest, but they do make sense. Except for that one that's a bad translation of "yours truly".

>To summarise her lecture, gender is just the word we use to describe it. We could call them hot and cold nouns
Bullshit

English is ridiculously context-dependent, which can easily create misunderstanding, when French is on average much more clear.

I don't really get this discussion anyway. Every language has its good points and its stupidly bad mechanics.

Not this one, it was fucking broken. At least to me, but it was probably just clunky and didn't care enough about it.

What exactly are you trying to imply? That languages with gender decided that certain words were male and female? Not that it was just a weird caveat of the language which was termed something very easy and straightforward to understand?

>when French is on average much more clear.

You can't reasonably say grammatical gender is not connected to natural gender.

Precision creates clarity. It's just a matter of wether the added complexity is worth the gain.

English

youtube.com/watch?v=nEa--s-9STg

youtube.com/watch?v=le_uNGdpa4c

post IRL shitposts

Depends on the language I guess. It's masculine in Latin and I assumed it stayed the same for all the romance languages.

youtube.com/watch?v=4mIwMNQxzPg

English grammar is easy. The spelling is difficult.

Look up great vowel shift + Gutenberg press. Basically all languages go through big changes but English was going through one as spelling was becoming formalized, so we have middle english spellings today.

>implying the homonymic definitions of "free" aren't characteristic of a commodity society that subordinates ethical value to exchange value

People really don't speak like this in real life.

The spelling is not difficult, it's just nonsense. It follows no rules whatsoever after the great vowel shift.

Italian is clearly the language with the easiest, most consistent spelling. Spanish is a close second.

so...thats what makes it difficult?

Why is spelling consistency something to be desired?

chinese mandarin is super intuitive once you know the basics

Why would it not?

Beauty

well meme'd friend

Well, having some kind of logic behind it would certainly make it easier.

>raise and raze sound the same but have opposite definitions

You know, when I hear someone say a word I have never heard before, i would like to know how to write it.
And when I read a word I've never seen before, I'd like to know how it should be pronounced.

>Italian is clearly the language with the easiest, most consistent spelling
Serbian/Croatian is the same or even more consistent.

Зaткниcь, aнглийcкий нopмaльный язык кaк и любoй дpyгoй. He нpaвитcя? Taк иди нaхyй yeбaк.

>pls go

Soulless utilitarianism is a scourge.

Probably because it is closest to Latin, the truly God-tier language.
Pronunciation and spelling always follows strict rules.

Why don't you uniformfags learn esperanto and be done with it?

Because I wasted enough time learning a shitty language that everyone speaks so I don't plan on learning a good language no one speaks.

Oh yeah, I love Latin. Having to study it in high school here in Italy is great.
Too bad it doesn't have articles. It's probably the only thing it's missing.

>private school and public school mean the same thing in Angle Land

as does German

Never got this either, even though I'm from Scotlabd. Only found this out after speaking to some Engloid and talking about how I went to a public school as opposed to a private school and he was confused.

Well said moi droog.

You is plural, thou is singular.

>words having more than one meaning is unique to English

If English were so "fucked up" then it wouldn't be the international language. The English language will outlast England.

>If English were so "fucked up" then it wouldn't be the international language.
Yes it would. The widespread use of English has nothing to do with it being a superior language, it just happens to be what the British Empire used.

Kial vi pensas ke mi ne jam lernis gxin?

Perfect regularity and systems of affixes please my autism.

>MMXVII
>Non loqui Latine
Altum risus

>tfw german is such a beautiful language

English is the most ugly and animal language ever, it reflects the state of crisis in which we've been since two centuries