I dunno. I'm French and perfectly aware that my language is difficult to master. I wouldn't say it's dumb but it's just because I'm stupidly proud of my country.
I think OC made a poor word choice with "dumb". Whether they intended it or not, no human language is dumb, they're all valid and functioning. I've studied French for many years, and will never have an intuitive sense of noun genders, it's just something I have to memorize by rote. The same is true for how complex structures of pronouns and modifiers seem to collapse into a compressed string of apostrophes when used informally. But when I ask French people how they know the gender of a noun, they shrug and say "I just do". The same is true for English's infamously fussy collection of special cases for grammar and spelling, which (as a native speaker) I never remember having to consciously learn how to navigate in
speech or writing, though I must have. Your native language seems natural to you, including all the parts that outsiders may call dumb.
What I've learned about french is that the end of many words are a mash of keyboard letters including at least a few vowels with bonus points for the hardest consonants that exist (x, k, j, z, p, go wild!) which regardless of its contents is always pronounced as a vowel sound halfway between English "ew" and English "uh".
Seems to happen more frequently in last names and place names than anywhere else, as well.
the last half of french words have letters out the oiseaux
As a very strict anti-nationalist - what is it about your country you are proud of?
Nb I travel a lot and ask the question a lot (when appropriate). When i think of 'my country', i see nothing to be proud of. I didn't do it. I believe George Carlin summmed it up best: be proud of things you did, not countries, and stuff (sorry, can'tfind link)?
Besides nationalistic propaganda, I would imagine the root cause is a form of tribalism — the same reason people tend to root for their home sports team. For that reason, I also think being proud of something you had no choice in is understandable, but irrational. There is no way to be proud of one’s immutable identity without making a value judgement of the out group. Maybe unsurprisingly, Germans tend to be allergic to nationalism since they’re intimately familiar with its natural outcome.
I think everyone should be proud of their country, despite its flaws. If you choose not to be, that's fine. I'm proud to be American, despite our internal strife and external belligerence. If I were born Chinese, I'd be proud of its incredible history, despite its current capture by the CCP and human rights abuses, etc. There's a difference between patriotism and nationalism.