I know a lot of languages have some aspects that probably seem a bit strange to non-native speakers…in the case of gendered words is there a point other than “just the way its always been” that explains it a bit better?
I don’t have gendered words in my native language, and from the outside looking in I’m not sure what gendered words actually provide in terms of context? Is there more to it that I’m not quite following?
Long ago, and I mean very, very long ago, in all cultures, when you named a child, the name would be derived from the language, something still common in the main Asian languages. Of course, when you have a name system, you need to separate names by gender, so they would separate their dictionary by gender. Over time, however, names became separate from words (so we got people named, for example, “Johnny Smith” instead of “Cloud Bridge”) and the gendered rule just stuck around (furthermore it explains why Western cultures are accustomed to naming kids after relatives, because we no longer have the whole baby name book at the top of our heads because it’s separate from the dictionary). This means, no, it won’t ruin the language ecosystem to simply remove the gendered rule.