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?

  • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠
    9•1 year ago

    It can help with disambiguation of pronouns. Eg. if I’m talking about a city (ciudad, female) and state (estado, male) you can tell which one I mean because the pronoun “it”, neutral in English, has both male (lo) and female (la) forms in Spanish.

    It also makes a language more poetic, IMPO.