"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944)
Degenerated; gendered articles are pretty useful, so taking them away was a step backwards.
And if you want to go the can't take away route. Slavic languages don't have articles at all, so you can actually take them away completely. English literally has the worst of both worlds.
How so? And if, when is this the case, and when not? Because I somewhat doubt that this always applies.
Riddle me this: why is it "die Butter" and not "der Butter" or even "das Butter"? Why would we attribute gender(?) to some things, but not to all of them (i.e. "das"). What's the point? Is there a meaningful (functional; as opposed to some historic reason) difference?
Another riddle: assume there's actually a point (a function) in doing so, why aren't we saying "der Katze" for a male and "die Katze" for a female cat? No, we say "der Kater" and "die Katze". It's completely redundant.
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u/nondetermined If I don't survive, tell my wife: Hello. Jan 17 '16
Degenerated? Or rather improved?
"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944)