As a native speaker of a language without articles, I find the English article system by far the most intuitive and easiest to learn of all the languages I have studied. Most other Indo-European languages have articles that you simply need to memorize, as there is no way to derive them from the word itself. Which I never manage to do.
Genders in language is seemingly such a needlessly pointless concept I am really confused as to how it ever developed.
I still feel Armenian is such a great Indo European language. No articles, no genders, completely phonetic, consistent verb endings, no particular word ordering
In languages with genders you need fewer unique words for gender-related concepts. For example English (genderless) has "boy" and "girl", while Spanish (male and female) has "niño" and "niña".
This is often apparent from the sound or spelling of a word, rather than any genderedness in its concept. A chair is une chaise (feminine), and it would be weird for chaise to be masculine. It’s not because the chair is feminine, it’s because the word is. There are some rules that help you figure out the gender based on the word (often what sound the word ends with), but there are exceptions to those rules.
Livre (book) is actually an example of where the gender creates a different meaning: un livre is a book, while une livre is a pound (the unit of weight).
deliciousturkey · · focus · HN ↗
nlitened · · focus · HN ↗
andoando · · focus · HN ↗
I still feel Armenian is such a great Indo European language. No articles, no genders, completely phonetic, consistent verb endings, no particular word ordering
igsomething · · focus · HN ↗
SamBam · · focus · HN ↗
mplanchard · · focus · HN ↗
Livre (book) is actually an example of where the gender creates a different meaning: un livre is a book, while une livre is a pound (the unit of weight).