Why do some languages have gender for words? What even is the point?

>>69140103
Because we have to distinct ourselves from Germans by making our language more complicated

>>69140103
Ask the Romans

Ask the PIE people

>>69140103
They were not knowledgeable enough at the time to know that gender is a social construct

>>69140103
ancient tradition
from back in the time where people were animistic and every being had a spirit

Because some words are just girly and not befitting of manly men

>>69140103
It allows you to describe multiple ideas without having to create dozens of stupid words, unlike English.

>>69140103
The gender has an additional meaning in the nature of things.

languages are just random noises that are assigned meaning

who cares

it can save time for some stuff
instead of having to use words like "old woman" we just say "anciana" or "vieja"

>>69140189
German has four genders you dipshit

>>69143029
he's not talking about gendered adjectives, though

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82KB, 600x774px

It's easier to personificate things when every noun is gendered

>>69140103
It's useful

>>69143316
>>69143316
Three*

>>69143316
Masculine, neuter, feminine, ???

>>69140103
It's fairly pointless in languages like French. However, in Irish, the gender affects the way words are formed in certain cases, and thereby makes the language flow better when spoken.

>>69140414
Kek.

>>69143316
It has three: Masculine, Feminine and Neuter. However, in 1945, they should have reduced it to just one, neuter, seeing as Germany had been permanently neutered.

>>69144833
>???
Transgender desu. I'm pretty sure it's an obligatory category in modern european languages

We have masculine non living,masculine living,neuter and feminine

>>69145213
>masculine non living,masculine living
What's the difference?

>>69144422
yeah but which came first, the naming or the personification?

>>69140103
>Why do some languages have gender for words?
>What even is the point?
1. Gender can serve to easily disambiguate between third person objects within a sentence or discourse.
2. They can allow "derivation" of words via another dimension. For example, French "manche" means "handle" in the masculine but "sleeve" (of a shirt) in the feminine. Similarly, Spanish punto "dot" and punta "tip (of a pencil, spear)". This is what >>69140552 meant (I think).
3. Gender adds redundancy that helps to parse a sentence, keeping phrases tight. This is like the trade-off in programming languages between readability vs. length: the repetition involved in gender redundancy (for example Spanish lOS torOS poderosOS 'the powerful bulls') ensures information gets across (in this case -os marks the plural).
4. Thanks to point 3., gender also allows free or free-er word order without using cases (as in the cases of Latin or Russian).

>>69140103
Faster understanding of the things said.

E.g. shortening two-word constructs like "old man" = "starik", "old woman" = "starukha".

Also, we can imply physical size differences by altering the word structure, it has nothing to do with gender though, but shortening again.

E.g. "gorodok" = "a relatively small city", "gorodische" = "a relatively big city".

Saying something like "Esli Kostroma - gorodok, to Moskva - gorodische" woudln't interpret stylistically well, instead it just means "Kostroma is a small city compared to Moscow".

We use various suffixed to indicate subtle differences in various substances, besides gender, to shorten the amount of words needed to deliver the thought and make it more creative.

English is a very straightforward, but bland language in this regard.

>>69144833
>>69145121
Genders are all the same in plural.
I'm pretty sure Italybro just messed up there tho

Since most languages don't have grammatical genders and do just fine without them, none

>>69145857
If there was no point, they wouldn't be used desu

>>69145294
Living things are living, non living things aren't.
>>69140103
What this anon said:
>>69145355
Also, many languages have noun categories that make it easier to distinguish what is what in the course of a conversation. One form of categorization is gender, another is grade of animacy or shape.

>>69145946
I meant the difference in the gender forms

>>69140103
Also, we don't need to know the full initial context or situation to know the gender of the things discussed.

E.g. in English "How can you be this incoherent?" (In terms of speech/writing) doesn't give you a clue what type of the object discussed is being incoherent, you need to figure wtf is going on yourself out of the context.

In Russian, on the contrary

"Kak mozhno byt' takoj nevniatnoj?" (refering to the female source of incoherence)

"Kak mozhno byt' takim nevniatnym?" (refering to the male gender source of incoherence)

"Shto mozhet byt' takoe nevniatnoe?" (refering to the neutral gender source of incoherence)

You always know of whom or of what you're talking about without refering to the old sentences much. This information kinda stays in in the form of these suffixes.

>when cucks start using the femenine as default speech
lel

>>69145936
they can still be used as tradition, i pointed out already
for example the H is silent in spanish but no one dares to eliminate it yet, because most words would look weird without

>>69145213
According to this logic, we should mark out 6 genders in Russian: masculine animate, masculine inanimate, feminine animate, feminine inanimate, neuter animate and neuter inanimate

>>69146089
I don't know, there's a bit of a difference between a letter and a whole different category like gender.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieimw3a6Sow

>>69140103
because they're MISOGYNISTIC SHITLORDS

>>69140103
linguistically speaking gender is pretty much useless but for some reason it's really prevalent in Indo-Euro languages

I hope it will gradually disappear, like cases

>>69145936

Well, that was kinda my point, since most languages don't have grammatical genders and work just fine, there really is no point, otherwise they would be used in those languages as well, right?

>>69146170
no, if you think about it, it's all about word morphology
romance languages could INVENT a neuter mode and try to force it on the populace, but it would be forced and weird (at first)
instead, at least in spanish and portuguese, i see many english neologisms being assigned genders on some arbitrary fashion (some say "el internet" and others "la internet" for example)

>>69146328
Lots of languages don't have gender distinctions, and they do just fine. Ergo, there is no point in having them.
Lots of languages don't have an obligatory singular-plural distinction, and they do just fine. Ergo, there is no point in having it.
Lots of languages don't have articles, and they do just fine. Ergo, there is no point in having it.

What is the best language, and why is it Chinese?

t. Zhang

are you jesting m8? chinese can't survive without articles, which are many

>>69148860

None of those articles are necessary because of the lack of gendered nouns.

>>69140103
Finland is "she" in russian

>>69149575
not every article is about genders. there's possesive, demonstrative, number articles...
.... i think i'm confusing prepositions with articles. my bad