Clarification Edit: for people who speak English natively and are learning a second language

  • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
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    3 months ago

    I mean, you do memorise them, you just don’t realise you’re doing it because you’re a baby or toddler and babies and toddlers are language sponges, and not very aware of how their own minds work.

    When learning a gendered language as an adult you definitely have no option but to memorise what gender each word uses, since there’s generally no specific rule, just how the language happened to evolve. (And this can be particularly hard if your native language is gendered, but you’re trying to learn one that genders words differently, for instance when learning German coming from a Romance language, or vice versa.)

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      No, you don’t memorize it. You memorize the words and how they sound, then based on how their endings sound, you know their gender. You don’t have to maintain a dictionary of words to their gender. There are a few exceptions and you memorize those, but for the most part all you need to memorize is a few rules.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Not really. In case you’re not catching the implication, it means there is no more memorization of words’ gender in Spanish than there is in English, for instance.

          You simply do not need to memorize gender as it can and is derived on the spot from other memorized info, ie the word itself.