Still, gender is one of those language features that in my view is just so useless that I wonder how it ever evolved in the first place. What exactly is it about tables that make them feminine? In my native Norwegian we have gone one step farther in messing up our langauge and thus have three genders, and a table in Norwegian is "intetkjønn" (the "no gender" gender!). It would make no difference at all if it were masculine; we'd conjugate adjectives differently and use different articles and pronouns to refer to it, but the MEANING would be identical and the only reason it FEELS different is because I'm so used to this hollow concept that the gender of nouns is.

I've heard someone argue once that gender adds expressive power to the language because it allows poets to deliberately use the *wrong* gender when referring to something, adding poetic overtones. While there may be a grain of truth in that (incorrectly referring to l'amour as "elle" maybe) I still think poetry would be fine without this and it would greatly simplify the language, for the benefit of all.

And French has *sooo* much of these complications. Worst of all is the situation with the verbs. Even though the subject must be indicated explicitly - it cannot be derived from the verb - the verb still has to be conjugated with respect to subject, with six different forms. Thanks to the huge number of irregular verbs and the large number of tenses and moods this leads to a quite simply ridiculous number of forms that must just be memorized - if you have a poor memory, French is definitely not for you.

Consider the verb "to be", être. Just to be able to express this verb in the most common forms, one must memorize 6 forms in the present, 12 forms in the past (there are two very commonly used forms to express the past, the passé composé and imparfait), 6 forms in the pluperfect, 6 forms in the future, 6 forms in the "future in the past", 6 forms in the conditional present, and 6 forms in the subjunctive. That's 56 verb forms to remember just for "to be"! And to make matters worse many of the forms are very similar - the conditional takes the endings from the imparfait for example, but the stem changes differently. Verbs may be regular in some conjugations and irregular in others, so there's no truly clear-cut distinction between regular and irregular verbs.

The verbs to be, to have, to go, and to come are probably the four most important in any language, and in French they are the most irregular of all. To go even uses 3 different stems from 3 different latin verbs: "aller" (infinitive of to go) comes from allare, in turn from ambulare, from where English has verbs such as "ambulance"; "je vais" (I go) from vadre, from which English has words such as "invade" and "evade", and "j'irai" (I will go) comes from ire, from which English probably has many words I cannot think of!

Compare that to English: To be is an irregular verb. And English too conjugates verbs with respect to subject. However, there are never more than 4 forms because there's only one form in the plural. In addition, many irregular verbs in English have the same form for all subjects except an s is added for third person singular - I get, you get, he/she/it gets, we/you/they get. BUT I am, you are, he/she/it is, we/you/they are.

Since English verbs in the past tense have maximum two forms (1. + 3. person singular, 2. person singular + all plural forms) we can master the two most basic tenses with 6 forms compared to 18 in French. But here comes the big difference: Now we can construct in a totally regular way, and totally easy one too, the future by using "will" and infinitive, the conditional present by using "would" plus infinitive, or the conditional past by using "would have" plus the particip. Each of those require another 18 forms to just *memorize* for EVERY irregular verb in French!! In English, if you know the infinitive and particip of any verb, regular or not, you can construct the future and the conditional without breaking a sweat:

I will (eat, go, jump, steal, lie, meet a girl, have fun, burn down the house, ....)

They will (eat, go, jump.... ALL THE SAME)

I would (eat, go, jump, .... ALL THE SAME AGAIN)

I would have (eaten, gone, jumped, .... particip)

The construction of each is 100% regular and 0% problematic. I'll have noone come and tell me English somehow would be improved if instead you had to use six different forms that varied in an irregular way for every verb of the language.