"Well, yes, yes, yes, I'm banging on about her again
(And again, and again, and again),
'Cause I can't get those things she's been saying off my brain!
And this time I ain't mentioning no names
(No names, no names, no names),
'Cause that would make it too damn obvious."
"Yet Again" - Charli XCX
Every language has its very own idiosyncrasies. That makes the world more complete, by learning a language one can realise how the things they might take as obvious are just something more they and only they share; in other words, learning languages is a way to open one's mind. That for, our language implies a way to see the world: once you learn a someone can only be a he or a she because there is not a singular they in your language, you tend to divide humanity in he's and she's and that's going to be all of it for you.
My mother language is Spanish, and, as most Romanic Languages, it shares the idiosyncrasy of only being able to see he's and she's. It also makes it harder to build certain kinds of sentence or refer to certain kinds of objects than English. On the other hand, I've never had a problem with English that I hadn't had with Spanish before, and I've found that most problems I found with Spanish that made me use enormous periphrasys to express a simple idea could be resolved with less than three words in English.
For that matter, I took a look at the list of my written frustrations (a.k.a. a project that was meant to become an opinion blog in Spanish) and picked some notable examples of lacks of the Spanish language that English supplies:
- I don't know about you, but I'd get offended I was referred to as ello. I know I've already said it twice in this post, but Spanish does not offer its speakers a way to refer to persons without mentioning (and mostly assuming) their gender. Well, at least, not in singular...
- In plural, we're all men. As what I first said might imply, a language brings a way to see a way to see the world with it. In case of Spanish, we're meant to assume men significant and women only deserve representation in human collectives if they are the totality of it: plurals containing male and female individuals are inherently masculine plurals.
- Everyone has gender... even tables. When I said humans can't be gender-neutral in Spanish I should have said nothing can. Chairs, tables, cupboards, oxides, everything has what is known as immotivated gender: gender for non-sexuated objects. This implies Spanish has no way to refer to anything, human or not, without assigning a gender to it, and, sorry, but, no, not all humans want to be jailed inside a gender.
- How do you call un hombre que escala montañas? A mountain-climbing man. When it comes to needing enormous periphrasys to express something than can be said in three words, Spain is populated by experts.
- Let's talk about Geography. I've got friends in Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Montenegro, even Ukraine. And none of them speak Spanish (well, one of them tries, but they don't speak very fluently). I dare you to guess which language I use to communicate with all of them...
And, well, I've only put some (and most of them are the same, to be honest: Spanish = male or sub-male), but I think I'm missing lots and lots of occasions and examples where Spanish does a terrible job at... trying. Languages are meant to allow speakers to express anything, with the differences and connotations they want in their discourse, and that's something Spanish and Catalan both fail at.
