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What do you know today, that you did not yesterday?

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Diogenes Oct 2022 3:51pm, 19 Oct 2022 73,616 posts	Quote Pin Diogenes I'm convinced that most language rules and grammar are too complicated to bother learning, and only hinder mastering every day speech.
jabberknit Oct 2022 3:55pm, 19 Oct 2022 4,260 posts	Quote Pin jabberknit Although there is some research that would suggest that gender may influence the way adjectives are used in languages with grammatical genders. The speaker briefly discusses this in the TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k All interesting, but the relevant bit starts about 8 minutes in.
GlennR Oct 2022 4:04pm, 19 Oct 2022 66,071 posts	Quote Pin GlennR Diogenes, out of the languages I know something about, Russian and Hebrew are two that you’d never get anywhere with without learning the grammar.
Diogenes Oct 2022 4:10pm, 19 Oct 2022 73,618 posts	Quote Pin Diogenes GlennR as usual my opinions are based on a very high level of ignorance
GlennR Oct 2022 4:22pm, 19 Oct 2022 66,072 posts	Quote Pin GlennR We're very lucky with English Dio, it is very much "it is the way it is" and that's how we learn it. In either Russian or Hebrew the word for "sat" in the phrase "the cat sat on the mat" changes with the gender of the cat.
ThorntonRunner Oct 2022 5:16pm, 19 Oct 2022 6,313 posts	Quote Pin ThorntonRunner Is there a default when you want to comment on a random cat in the street that you can't ascertain the gender of?
GlennR Oct 2022 5:31pm, 19 Oct 2022 66,077 posts	Quote Pin GlennR Male, true in most gendered languages I think.
Eynsham Red Oct 2022 6:19pm, 19 Oct 2022 9,080 posts	Quote Pin Eynsham Red Male, true in most gendered languages I think. Shouldn’t we be being more inclusive in these more enlightened days 🤔😉
GlennR Oct 2022 7:37pm, 19 Oct 2022 66,083 posts	Quote Pin GlennR Easy enough in English, trickier in some other languages. In Russian for example you can't refer to a cat as "it". However, in the present tense the male and female forms of the verb are the same. It is the past form that is the problem.
Groundhog Oct 2022 8:20pm, 19 Oct 2022 4,861 posts	Quote Pin Groundhog What's inside a 9v battery. It's 6 x 1.5v batteries wired in series. They are not quite AAA size, though they might actually be. Is have to take apart a AAA to see what's inside.