What's the point of gendered words in certain languages? - eviltoast

I know a lot of languages have some aspects that probably seem a bit strange to non-native speakers…in the case of gendered words is there a point other than “just the way its always been” that explains it a bit better?

I don’t have gendered words in my native language, and from the outside looking in I’m not sure what gendered words actually provide in terms of context? Is there more to it that I’m not quite following?

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
    1·
    1 year ago

    English’s is extremely worn-down; we only use gender on pronouns, whereas many other European languages use it on articles and adjectives with all nouns.

    It’s also worth noting that even those gendered pronouns in English work differently. Since they don’t have a grammatical gender system to rely on, they “hot-wire” to things outside language, such as social gender and sex.