> In place of German's 4 cases, Czech has 7; in place of German's 3 genders, Czech has 4. (Czechs think there are 3, but really there are 4. Polish has 5.)
Polish has 3 genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), just like Czech. And 7 cases, like Czech.
You may not notice them, you may not consider them to be genders, but they look like it, they act like it; they're there and they make life very difficult for foreign learners.
Personal (męskoosobowy), animate (męskożywotny), and inanimate (męskorzeczowy) are not genders. Which is the same situation with Czech (životny - animate, etc).
If it looks like a duck, walks and swims and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
I lived in Czechia 10 years and after over half a decade of bloody hard work, I got to beginning B1 level Czech. It has 4 genders and they change adjectives and the accusative declination, and it is not important to me that Czechs don't consider them genders. They're genders. The levels of the hierarchy do not matter, merely the number of nodes.
A comparison: English has no future tense, strictly speaking. But in reality, really, it does: "I will say X". In fact arguably two: "I am going to say X." Technically to a linguist it's not a tense, it's a mode expressed with an auxiliary verb, but that doesn't matter. Acts like a tense. Used like a tense. It's a tense.
Slavic nouns come in arbitrary categories and you need to know which category it's in to conjugate it properly. French and Spanish have 2, German has 3, Czech has 4, Polish has 5. What they are called? Don't care. Not important to me.
I do not know Polish or speak Polish. I am 100% not claiming any authority here.
For one, "męski męskożywotny" is not what it is called, it is just męskożywotny (the gender is already in the word, male male-animate, has a weird ring to it).
But all that means is that the object is of a masculine gender, and is living.
Męskorzeczowy (masculine, thing) -- mały dom (small house)
Żeński (feminine) -- małą górę (small hill)
Nijaki (neuter) -- małe zwierzę (small animal)
The three masculine examples are all of the same gender, masculine --
the difference is if they are a person, animal or thing. None of which are genders, a house and a dog are both masculine.
I'm not going to argue about the complexity of Slavic, specially West Slavic languages -- cause they are complicated. :-). But you are absolutely incorrect in saying that we (Czech or Polish) have more than 3 genders. That you don't think it is particularly important is a bit sad, since these are the things that make Slavic such a fun language group.
I'm Slovak here. Although there are three genders, there are certain situations in which certain kinds of nouns undergo changes according to a finer subdivision than the 3 genders. I'm no expert on that. I don't think it necessarily amounts to separate genders. Or does it?
Let me see if I can recall an example. Okay, how about the word for horse, which is kôn, and man which is muž. This is masculine: ten kôn (that[masc] horse), ten muž (that[masc] man).
However, in the third person we have tý muži (those[masc] men) and tie koňe
(those[fem? neut?] horses)?
The demonstrative tie is the same like the feminine one, tie ženy (those[fem] women) or neuter tie deti (those children).
Even if that is a special gender difference, it does not fall along the animate versus inanimate line, because horses are clearly animate.
Inanimate objects that are masculine in the singular do fall into this: ten stôl (that[m] table), tie stoly (those[f] tables).
It might be human versus non-human. Collections of non-human male gender things are not themselves males, but neuters.
I find it strange that you are labelling ten/tie/.. as with gender. I don't know Slovak, but I'd expect it is the same as in Polish that the gender is on the subject. E.g., stôl is stół in Polish, and "męskorzeczowy", so masculine. "Ten stół" or "te stóły" -- te or ten is neither feminine nor masculine.
These demonstrative particles themselves don't have gender since they are not nouns, but they have a gender-based variety, and must pair correctly with the nouns by gender.
It's similar to la and le in French. You cannot say "Vive le France"; it has t obe "la France".
They are used as helpers in communicating the gender of a noun. If we say "ten stôl", it reaffirms that the noun is masculine. "tá stôl" is ungrammatical.
Other words are like this. E.g. interrogative wh- words: "ktorý muž?" (which man?) "ktorá žena?" (which woman?)
The semantics is future, but tense is a matter of syntax.
The modal verb which establishes future semantics it not in a future tense; it is in its dictionary form: to will.
In archaic English we can say things like "As I will it, so it shall be" where the verb isn't acting as a modal. The modal will comes from that one, I believe.
Polish has 3 genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), just like Czech. And 7 cases, like Czech.