Something I will like to explain to everybody is, all languages have the same level of complexity. Well all modern languages anyway. Otherwise they would be categorized as a Pidgin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin

No language is better, as of now, at describing, explaining, or any form of communication. They seem to all advance at the same rate, and actually languages are getting more simple and easy than they are getting complex. Remember, complexity isn't always good. It is only good when the learning curve is non-existent.

I think the complaint about having various genders for nouns with no apparent rhyme or reason (see c03n3nj0's example) is that learning it is complete brute force memorization. And complete nonsense from the perspective of an English speaker like me.

Maybe it's not a big deal if you're used to it, but for me it's like "the sun is male? WTF."

Yes, as a secondary language it is very difficult. Actually it is the most difficult thing I have to deal with in French. That doesn't mean to a native speaker who speaks it everyday that it would be more difficult than grammatical rules though. They speak it everyday, and after a while the gender is embedded into their mind. It is akin to learning the conjugations of an irregular verb in english or any other language for that matter . You might not know the rules behind learning the verb, but you do know how to say all of it's forms due to repitition.

^ I think the thing is that I accept that verbs get conjugated but something within rebels at the idea of random objects having random gender.

Well gender doesn't always mean Male and Female. Old English had 3 genders. It is just a distinction that nobody knows for sure where it came from. It something that is  older than Indo-European languages, yet it is only really found in them. There was probably some form of reason for them, but as of right now it isn't known for sure.

Are you sure about that one?

I mean I didn't think it was technically incorrect to use it as the indefinite singular.

We don't add a u.

You guys remove it.

I never really addressed this with a direct answer, despite how many posts I wrote. Back then, it was probably the case of both being acceptable. That means, nobody added AND nobody removed. They were both correct, and still are correct.

People call them male, female and neuter/neutral (?).  Is it really unassociated with biological gender?  
As for historical reasons for it, for all we know it was originally objects females worked with mostly, or men, or either.  But I'm completely making that up.   

It's definitely wrong according to the nitpickers AFAIK.  

IIRC (and I may not) this is actually one of the spelling "reforms" Webster inserted into his dictionary back in 1828.

We may have him to thank for dropping those Os, as well as a lot of the S-->Z replacements (-ise/-ize) and stuff like dropping a lot of double-Ls as in "traveler".  Who knows, maybe analog/analogue is his fault too.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences

Languages have different dialects (who knows if i spelled that correctly) over geographical boundaries.

I wouldn't say the English (as in UK) invented English, but they were the first to speak it (common sense knowledge coming into play).

I guess what I am saying that different pronunciations and spellings normally happen. Language is constantly changing. Even within the United States we have differences in the language.