I’ve asked the following question before and I’ve never gotten a good answer - why do the words need a gendered suffix at all? Why can’t the final O and A letters simply be omitted from all words that aren’t inherently gendered? Like the word for library is 'bibliotheca", so why can’t it just be called “bibliothec”?
The long and short of it is that it was decided on however long ago and now the people who learn the language growing up are used to it and they decide the rules that are followed.
English (and any non-native language) does many weird things that native speakers are just used to and will get upset if you try and change it.
That’s sort of exactly why i as an individual don’t understand why they don’t do it, because I’m a native english speaker and there’s a lot i would like to change about it. Like imo in spelling, almost all the silent letters that don’t effect pronunciation should be eliminated. Debt should be spelled det, night should be spelled nite
You do realize that this is kinda bad, right? No english spelling reform ever took hold because of the vast difference in english pronounciation. your “nite” might completely differ from the aussie version of “night”. so you’d have to declare one dialect to be the supreme one. That’ll be fun :)
Secondly: Gender and gendered terms are sociallinguistic conventions. And they do not follow stereotypical gender norms. Often they radiate outwards from gendered terms for humans and then encompass things that follow similar sound structures. sometimes gender is historically motivated: Spanish generally divides things along the lines of “does it end with an -a or -o” and then assigns gender. But terms like “diversidad” stem from female latin words and retain their gender. “problema” seems feminine, but stems from a male greek word and is therefore male. Not because “tHe MaLeS aRe ThE PrrObLeM”, but because ancient greek sound structures classified this as “male-sounding” and Spanish ran with it.
In German, “das Mädchen” (the girl) is neutral. Not bevause all girl are secretly enbies or equivalent to possesions, but the diminuitive “-chen” turns things neutral.
all that to say: “Why dont they do that” can always answered with a resounding “Why dont you have feature x?”. Why doesnt English use eventiality or cases or dual and trial numeri or tones or different conjugations depending on registers? Because the language didnt develope that way.
In case of night this might work, but for words like might it doesnt. Might now becomes orthographically indistinguishable from mite. Right and rite also lose their distinction.
In German, “das Mädchen” (the girl) is neutral. Not bevause all girl are secretly enbies or equivalent to possesions, but the diminuitive “-chen” turns things neutral.
There’s actually a somewhat tongue-in-cheek proposal to solve the “Doctor/Doctress” problem by turning absolutely everything diminutive. Das Präsidentchen, das Bundeskanzlerchen, etc.
It’s just one more thing to memorize when trying to learn them. I’m not going to intuitively know what gender a chair is…
I’ve asked the following question before and I’ve never gotten a good answer - why do the words need a gendered suffix at all? Why can’t the final O and A letters simply be omitted from all words that aren’t inherently gendered? Like the word for library is 'bibliotheca", so why can’t it just be called “bibliothec”?
The long and short of it is that it was decided on however long ago and now the people who learn the language growing up are used to it and they decide the rules that are followed.
English (and any non-native language) does many weird things that native speakers are just used to and will get upset if you try and change it.
That’s sort of exactly why i as an individual don’t understand why they don’t do it, because I’m a native english speaker and there’s a lot i would like to change about it. Like imo in spelling, almost all the silent letters that don’t effect pronunciation should be eliminated. Debt should be spelled det, night should be spelled nite
You do realize that this is kinda bad, right? No english spelling reform ever took hold because of the vast difference in english pronounciation. your “nite” might completely differ from the aussie version of “night”. so you’d have to declare one dialect to be the supreme one. That’ll be fun :)
Secondly: Gender and gendered terms are sociallinguistic conventions. And they do not follow stereotypical gender norms. Often they radiate outwards from gendered terms for humans and then encompass things that follow similar sound structures. sometimes gender is historically motivated: Spanish generally divides things along the lines of “does it end with an -a or -o” and then assigns gender. But terms like “diversidad” stem from female latin words and retain their gender. “problema” seems feminine, but stems from a male greek word and is therefore male. Not because “tHe MaLeS aRe ThE PrrObLeM”, but because ancient greek sound structures classified this as “male-sounding” and Spanish ran with it.
In German, “das Mädchen” (the girl) is neutral. Not bevause all girl are secretly enbies or equivalent to possesions, but the diminuitive “-chen” turns things neutral.
all that to say: “Why dont they do that” can always answered with a resounding “Why dont you have feature x?”. Why doesnt English use eventiality or cases or dual and trial numeri or tones or different conjugations depending on registers? Because the language didnt develope that way.
There isn’t a single widely-used english dialect that pronounces the g in night.
In case of night this might work, but for words like might it doesnt. Might now becomes orthographically indistinguishable from mite. Right and rite also lose their distinction.
There’s actually a somewhat tongue-in-cheek proposal to solve the “Doctor/Doctress” problem by turning absolutely everything diminutive. Das Präsidentchen, das Bundeskanzlerchen, etc.
there are soooo many proposals, but thats actually one i like. of course, it would render the entire diminuitive meaningless, buuuut its cute uwu
I pronounce epitome as epi-tome and refuse to change it no matter how many times I’m “corrected”
Are you one of those parmeseeean guys?