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Lack of Noun Gender in English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 97 of 126 23 December 2013 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
You're not the first one to ask... Building more native-like gender system? Gender articles for nouns - why? Gender in languages Languages without Gender? Origin of Inflection/Gender 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4253 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 98 of 126 24 December 2013 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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It never fails to baffle me that people would assume all languages save for a few exceptions would have grammatical gender.
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 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 99 of 126 27 December 2013 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
For those who are interested in this sort of thing, I highly recommend the Wikipedia article on Singular they. It has quite a few quotes showing that this form has existed for centuries:
So when some English speakers decided to avoid gendered pronouns, singular "they" naturally presented itself. It's always easier to "bend" a language in a direction where it has some existing flexibility. And this process hasn't stopped. One linguist—I think it was Pullman—pointed out that few modern English speakers would look twice at a sentence like "A pregnant student should talk to their guidance counselor about scheduling options." And of course, there are people who are comfortable with neither "he" nor "she", and who would really like people to use other singular pronouns. But in practice, it's hard to introduce a new pronoun like "sie" or "ey" into the language. And so what often happens is that "they" becomes a fully singular pronoun for a specific individual: "Sam is bringing their car tonight" instead of either "Sam is bringing zer car tonight" or "Sam is bringing eir car tonight". So singular "they" is one point where English will bend, and bend, and bend…
One interesting approach I've seen is to change the agreement rule used in sentences like the following:
According to standard French grammar, indépendents should be masculine, because Jean's a male, and therefore his gender takes precedence over Renée's. But French linguists have observed that native speakers will often say:
…because Renée is the referent closest to adjective. As with singular "they" in English, this possibility is latent in French. And indeed, I've seen French feminists argue that the second version of this sentence is preferable, or at least that it should no longer be considered an error. There's another interesting possibility in the French language: The use of elle for men. Any reader of military novels will have probably noticed that male sentinels are grammatically feminine:
This also happens with une personne and une victime, both of which will override biological gender. Of course, neither of these wrinkles in the French gender system would allow someone to write a gender-neutral job advertisement. But if anyone wants to modify the rules of gender in French, they're probably going to have to begin by exploiting the possibilities that already exist. However, as a non-native speaker, I strongly prefer to follow the advice of native speakers in these matters. Edited by emk on 27 December 2013 at 10:51pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 100 of 126 27 December 2013 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Thanks for the colour-coding, emk! Much more clear like that to me :P
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| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4290 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 101 of 126 28 December 2013 at 12:18am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I look back at my old English grammar, vocabulary, any academic books to pass exams
regarding vocabulary, and I notice a very glaring difference: the books show the vocabulary with no article, which I suppose makes sense since "the" is the only one possible for a definite, both singular and plural, but therein lies a problem for Anglophones. The training and accustomisation to learn vocabulary in English is only one word instead of in French and Spanish books: la voiture, le livre, l'assiette, etc. I remember some of my foreign language books have stated that native Anglophones should internalise the article for each new word in gendered languages, but it is completely unintuitive for an Anglophone, because in their own language, to learn a list of words is as such: book desk television door house But not: the book the desk the television the door the house since the latter is fairly redundant in English. So when one speaks in English, and tries to remember a new noun, the process follows for e.g., moon in "The moon shines tonight", the first step is the placeholder "the", "The..." then recall the word, "...moon shines tonight". But in a gendered language one has no "the" placeholder", i.e. a pause for a long time and a long thought about "Is it le or la? Is it el or la? Is it o or a? Is it il, lo, or la? Is it het or de?" And then the even more complicated, as mentioned earlier, adjectivial agreement, as well as the possessive agreement, and indefinite article agreement wherewith to concern oneself. The only article inflection is probably "a" to "an", but this definitely does not require memorisation. I do not think many people learning English vocabulary spend inordinate amounts of time trying to remember if the indefinite article of a noun must be "a" or "an", i.e. trying to memorise "an apple" instead of "a apple", which is completely different from French "un livre" and "une maison". When my French was very basic, in 2002 on holiday in Paris, if I did not remember the gender, I would mumble to mask my lack of knowledge or memory, i.e. instead of "le livre", I might have said "l' livre" or "lə livre" so that it would be difficult for the interlocutor to hear or decipher the article in case that I said the wrong one. But that is just poor speaking on my part, but it is something that might occur for native Anglophones. Edited by 1e4e6 on 28 December 2013 at 12:44am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 102 of 126 28 December 2013 at 11:13am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Everybody does that "speak quickly, they won't catch the mistake" thing :)
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| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4032 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 103 of 126 28 December 2013 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
But why would those few with gender or noun classes have such? What was their situation making distinctions in language? I am not asking you, I just am clarifying what I meant. Edited by Stolan on 28 December 2013 at 3:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5560 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 104 of 126 28 December 2013 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Just to mention about "singular they", it's not something we're doing to deliberately avoid being sexist, it's actually the pronoun of choice, for talking about people. Without having thought about it too much, I suspect that I probably use he and she only when referring to specific, known, previously-named individuals. I find it even perfectly natural to say something like (whispering, pointing discretely) "did you see what they just did?" (as opposed to "did you see what that bloke just did?) which probably breaks even more grammatical rules.
(I'm sure there probably are occassionally situations when you could consciously choose to use it to be deliberately gender neutral, though) Edited by schoenewaelder on 28 December 2013 at 3:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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