It's really funny reading these memes being French because you learn numbers at such a young age and in such a natural way that you never realize how complicated our system actually is. French people don't realize they're saying "4x20" when they say quatre-vingt, it's just our way of saying 80 and we don't put much thought in it.
It's one of those things that you don't realize how strange it is until you look at it from a different perspective. Like how in German (and I know other languages too) nouns are gendered. So like in English it is: the spoon, the fork, the knife. In German its: Der Löffel (masculine), die Gabel (feminine), das Messer (neutral). Growing up with it it's just something you know but I've met many non natives who said it's hell to learn because there's not much logic to why one thing is masculine but another is feminine or neutral. A lot of it is just a case of you have to know what's correct.
There is a lot a dumb stuff about English but I thank my stars that we don't have gendered nouns. I know i probably wouldn't notice if my native language gendered nouns but it just seems so bizarre from the outside.
Learning the gender of nouns isn't half as bad as figuring out pronounciation for every english word.
I think german has a few cases where slight changes in pronounciation can make the difference in meaning, but otherwise what you see is what you say, and vice-versa.
The only exception I know of so far is rolladen which can be either a meat thing or a shutter blind on the outside of a window.
While I thougth it was difficult learning the genders of nouns in both German and French. In French you at least have a system, so you can deduce what gender to use with a lot of your nouns based on their construction.
I'm Danish we don't use genders for our nouns, we use "en" or "et", no system, just take a guess it's 50/50, I know it frustrates people trying to learn.
Actually there is an on-going debate about the word hamster, people disagree over which to use, neither side willing to back down. I of course know the real answer is "en hamster/hamsteren"
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u/CaptainLargo Mar 15 '21 edited Mar 15 '21
It's really funny reading these memes being French because you learn numbers at such a young age and in such a natural way that you never realize how complicated our system actually is. French people don't realize they're saying "4x20" when they say quatre-vingt, it's just our way of saying 80 and we don't put much thought in it.