Linguistics Humor

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

submitted 2 weeks ago by Jakylla@sh.itjust.works to c/linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works

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