Agreed, but as a young nation of immigrants, it kinda comes with the territory. As a Canadian who lives abroad, people have asked me to cook 'Canadian food' for a dinner party more than once... I don't even know what that is.
Cheesus
joined 2 years ago
Right!? Are we just not allowed to reference certain body parts anymore? How are the Republicans at their next convention going to explain where they want the twink they hit up on Grindr where they want dat dick?
They're just so ubiquitous in English. In my experience, people coming from the Romance languages have a very hard time with them, because most of the actions they describe are a single verb in their mother tongues. Imagine having to remember what two words mean, but then also having to remember that when you use the two words together, they form a distinct, sometimes even unrelated, meaning.
And there's thousands.
Anus isn't even a bad word, this is getting out of control.
Typical.
La richesse de la langue ne cesse jamais de m'étonner.
It sounds ridiculous to us, but that's just how they talk. It also works in reverse for them; I sometimes have to remind my spouse when we're among English speakers that she sounds like she doesn't have enough mash potatoes in her mouth.
Pure poetry.
In French, it's 'le pénis,' but nobody says that. 'Dick,' is feminine (la bite.)
Also, 'vagina' is masculine, but 'pussy' is feminine, because if you were to say 'le chat' it would mean a cat, but by feminising the word, it becomes 'la chatte,' meaning pussy.
As someone who grew up Anglophone, I actually find gendered languages much more precise. On the other hand, in order to make yourself understood one must have a rich vocabulary, because the definitions of words are often more narrow than in English.
And don't even get me started on phrasal verbs... English is messy.
Exactly.
After a while, most words (with exceptions) just 'feel' like one gender or the other, but nobody ever thinks about it in terms of 'sex'. I barely even think about it at all, and I've only been speaking French daily for a couple years at this point.
Although it still bothers me that 'silicone' is feminine. It's just not logical.
Eh, French isn't that bad, although there is some general fuckery.
If you didn't know how to pronounce something in English before the internet, you were basically shit out of luck.
Henriette Walter. Her works on French linguistics are both fascinating and informative.
Iris Murdoch. I've only read The Sea, The Sea, but it's one of the books that got me into literature when I was a teenager. I really need to get around to exploring more of her work.
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