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What's the point of gendered words in certain languages? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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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?

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[-] cerement@slrpnk.net 18 points 1 year ago

gendered words, plural agreement, conjugations, declensions were all forms of “parity checking” for spoken languages – ways to make sure you were accurately hearing what had been spoken

as writing systems advanced, languages started to drop some of these forms when the written word was considered to be an “accurate” representation – ex. you can see this happening in the transition from Old English → Middle English → Modern English

[-] CapitalismsRefugee@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Oh this is fascinating! An example of the inverse could be maybe that Old/Older English didn't have spelling rules so much as habits?

[-] cerement@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 year ago

up until the printing press, spelling was more a matter of convention (“we always wrote it this way”) since it was relegated to clergy and scholars
the advent of the printing press saw a lot of creativity with spelling – adjusting the spelling was an easy way to justify lines of text on a page (much easier than trying to make micro-adjustments of word- and letter-spacing)
it was the introduction of dictionaries that started to “stabilize” spelling – and that was only because people (especially Johnson and Webster) started to get sick and tired of the lack of standards

this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023

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