> A language sprinkled with "learn by wrote" gender prefixes for every item is just not worth learning.

Bantu languages, which cover much of subsaharan Africa, have many noun classes ("genders")—sometimes as many as 20. You have to learn all sorts of prefixes for each noun class depending on their grammatical role in tying to the noun.

However, it's really not so bad. Once you get the hang of the noun classes, it actually makes picking up the ear for it faster. Of course this is more true the more consistent the language in applying its internal rules.