[OJFord]

> 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.