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HelpRe: I've just realized something! (m)
in reply to a message by Sofia
Yeah, my Mexican exchange student attended a class of English-speaking students learning Spanish, and asked why we learn it with the article and the noun (example: el chico--the boy, la chica--the girl) instead of just "boy" or "girl." I said it was so we know what the gender is. And she said, "But isn't it obvious?" I guess it never occurred to her that we don't have the concept in English so what is intuitive to her is something we have to be taught and consciously try to learn.
ETA: Fixed typo
ETA: Fixed typo
This message was edited 7/20/2009, 4:25 PM
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I love that German has genders. It makes the language much more vivid for me, but it also makes learning Spanish hard because I want to apply the German genders to the Spanish words. :-/ But at least I get some funny English mistakes from my friends out of it.
"Oh, the train is here. I can see her already!"
"My printer doesn't work. He is broken."
He, the printer. LOL.
"Oh, the train is here. I can see her already!"
"My printer doesn't work. He is broken."
He, the printer. LOL.
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If those were the examples used maybe she was confused by those particular ones, since boy, man, husband, brother all represent a male person and girl, woman, wife, sister... all are female persons.
It's even harder when your language has one gender for a noun and then you learn a new language and they have a different gender. Spanish and Croatian are close in this, but German sometimes killed me:-(
It's even harder when your language has one gender for a noun and then you learn a new language and they have a different gender. Spanish and Croatian are close in this, but German sometimes killed me:-(
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