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why (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/memes@sopuli.xyz
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[–] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I think it’s to make it less ambiguous.

In English you just use the same word and figure it out from context. Someone else gave some other Spanish examples but I like “right” (direction) = “la derecha” vs “right” (human rights) = “los derechos”.

Of course there’s still so many variants of meaning that grammatical gender doesn’t help much.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    If you're writing a poem in German, you can apparently switch the positions of the subject, object and indirect object without changing the meaning, since the gender and article of the word indicate whether it's the subject (Nominativ), object (Akkusativ) or indirect object (Dativ). (e.g. subject: der Mann, object: den Mann, indirect object: dem Mann)

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