• isthingoneventhis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Man French was so difficult for my brain to parse. The word genders felt so silly/arbitrary that it never stuck, which is hilarious given the context of … English, but omfg did it not gel with me.

    • Gork@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah the general lack of gendered nouns is one of English’s better traits, even if most of our words are bastardized words from other languages.

    • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s the same in German. The issue is that people learning the language try to make sense of it. It doesn’t feel arbitrary, it is completely arbitrary. As a native you don’t think about that at all, because they’re like one word to you.

      When you learn a language like German as a native, you don’t have rules or think about what is gendered how and why.

      It’s not that you learn „Sonne“ (sun) and „Mond“ (moon) first and then learn the appropriate gender for each.

      You learn „die Sonne“ and „der Mond“ from the start. It’s just one word with a blank in the middle to us.

      • isthingoneventhis@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah. It’s funny because I am learning Danish eight now and it makes infinitely more sense than French ever did but I think it’s because, at least to me, it’s much closer to English and a lot of it is “well we do it just cause?” and my brain is like “oh cool great! I know how to cope with that”.

        Whereas learning something that is so structured like German/French it feels very overwhelming I guess in that sense. I don’t feel like I have to think about Danish because it feels very ‘normal’.

        • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Huh, I mean, sure French is different from either English and Danish, since it’s a Romance language, but I’m not sure why you would add German to that, which is closely related to English and to Danish as well. Especially if you speak Lower German dialect you understand a lot of Danish, which has been influenced by Low German since medieval times.

          Danish is actually more structured, you have less leeway regarding syntax.

          • isthingoneventhis@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            A lot of my teachers (danish speakers) or miscellaneous people often comment that German is easier because of its structure or uh formulaic-ness, or that is what I tend to hear that mostly. It might just be that there are a lot of Germans or German speakers in my area.

            Conversely when I was learning French it was never prescribed as difficult, just lots of memorization for the uh… forms/genders? it’s been too long I barely remember any of it to be honest, but now I see all of the French loans in Danish ಠ_ಠ

            But generally my issues or frustrations with Danish stem from when modern words are prescribed as 1:1 translations when older/uncommon English words more aptly describe what is being said. Which in fairness would probably not be words a non-native speaker would have knowledge of.

            • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I think syntactically Danish is much less complex and easier, you know, only two cases, two genders. It’s just that nobody understands shit when they open up their mouths… ¯\(ツ)

              https://youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

              Oh, and the way they count is… I mean, you couldn’t do it worse than the French if you tried, but the Danish are just „hold my gløgg… halvfjerds“ 🤡