Linguistics Humor

1121 readers

1 users here now

Do you like languages and linguistics ? Here is for having fun about it

Share this community: [!linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works](/c/linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works)

Serious Linguistics community: !linguistics@mander.xyz

Rules:

1- Stay on Topic
Not about Linguistics, language, ways of communications
2- No Racism/Violence
3- No Public Shaming
Shaming someone that could be identifiable/recognizable
4- Avoid spam and duplicates

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Jakylla@sh.itjust.works

lvxferre@mander.xyz

234

Hard time to be non-binary Spanish person (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Jakylla@sh.itjust.works to c/linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works

47 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] jbrains@sh.itjust.works 16 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

I wonder whether linguists and others will gradually adopt calling them noun classes instead of genders.

I have a harder time believing we'd adopt a new term to supplant "gender" for human social roles, but stranger things have happened.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 8 points 3 weeks ago

I wonder whether linguists and others will gradually adopt calling them noun classes instead of genders.

I hope so. It would also help when explaining the grammar of a few languages to laypeople. Such as the Bantu ones - people treat their noun classes as if they were something completely alien, even when they speak a language with M/F noun classes.

[–] PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Especially in Spanish where "verb classes" already exist and have distinct, if subtle, rules (-ar, -er and -ir)

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago

Don't they call it "conjugations" in Spanish too?

Note however that they work in a really different way, more like noun declensions than like noun classes=gender. For example, you don't trigger agreement; even if you were to replace an -ar verb with an -er or -ir verb, the rest of the sentence stays the same.