All languages are a mess. Imagine instead of specific noun rules, every single noun had a rule by way of a gender. And to conjugate “boat” or “table” you need to know its arbitrary gender.
English, unlike a lot of the big European languages, doesn’t have a central controlling body and hasn’t gone through powerful standardisation efforts - beyond dictionaries (i.e. consistent spelling and meaning). many (most?) European languages follow pretty consistent conjugation and pronunciation rules. yeah there are a few exceptions in each case, but nowhere near the scale of English.
grammatical gender is in most cases only really as hard as learning the words themselves
> grammatical gender is in most cases only really as hard as learning the words themselves
That's a really good point actually, one I've not heard before.
I think it's still harder learning from an ungendered language, since you naturally think of mapping word:word, but you also need word:gender now. With your point though, maybe I can have an easier time of it by trying to consciously think of it instead as word:(word, gender), if that makes sense.
grammatical gender is in most cases only really as hard as learning the words themselves