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Germanic Gender (across the family) | ||
Tags: Germanic Languages | Gender | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4680 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 1 of 17 12 December 2012 at 11:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi everyone,
this is a fairly wide question, but as I'm embarking on a Germanic journey, answers to this question could save me a lot of time and pain. So here it is: To what extent is it possible to learn the gender of a Germanic word once and assume it is the same for all of the other Germanic languages? (for a cognate, of course) I suppose there is not an absolutely perfect correspondence, but are we closer to 95% or to 0%? I am particularly interested in the following: -the correspondence between Old Norse and Old English genders. (for the basic vocabulary I've learnt, it seems to always correspond...) -the transition from Old Norse to Norwegian: is it a simple merge of Masculine and Feminine into the common gender? -how about German? Thanks in advance for any answer. I really hope I won't have to learn 4 genders for each word and that exceptions will really be exceptions! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 2 of 17 12 December 2012 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My guess is that the mapping between Dutch and German is fairly close (das = het for
90% of cases or something), but since the Scandinavian languages and Dutch do not distinguish between masculine and feminine for the most part (with the exception of Norwegian and Belgian Dutch, although you can stick with using two for both), the mapping between German and those others for sure is not one to one. Ett-words are not het-words in Dutch, not by any means, either (I am using Swedish as a reference point since that's the Scandinavian language I've studied). There are some endings which are a dead giveaway: -ing words are always feminine, same with -heid/het/heit. But mostly it's a case-by-case basis. If it's a cognate, the odds are good it's the same. So sometimes it might be better to look up what the gender of the cognate word is rather than that of the direct translation (which in Germanic languages can vary quite a bit). Edited by tarvos on 12 December 2012 at 1:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 17 12 December 2012 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Norwegian has three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter). Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Østlandsk have a
curious mix between a three gender system (masculine, feminine and neuter) and a two gender system (common gender and neuter) where feminine nouns can behave like masculine nouns. There are a few nouns where the gender depends on the dialect and the person speaking. "Kjede", for instance, can be feminine, masculine or neuter. However, in general, gender is fairly consistent across Norwegian dialects and between Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål. I think the same is true between Danish, Swedish and Norwegian too. If a noun is neuter in Norwegian, it is most likely neuter in Danish and Swedish. If a noun is masculine or feminine in Norwegian, it is most likely common gender (utrum) in Danish and Swedish. The correspondence between Scandinavian and German is much less. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4680 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 4 of 17 12 December 2012 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@tarvos: Hmm, your last comment prompts an answer I believe:
I'm ONLY interested in an answer in the case of cognates. I don't expect two words with the same meaning but completely different roots to have the same gender. I'm merely trying to make use, as far as possible and reasonable, of cognates. I also mentioned Norwegian for the 2 gender, by asking if at least we could infer that masculine+feminine in Old Norse (/German/Old English/any 3-gender one) => masculine+feminine in Norwegian (/any common vs neuter one); As for suffixes that systematically indicate gender, that's of course not my biggest concern, but you'll notice that these suffixes are shared across languages (-heit/-het, -ing/-ung). :) @tractor: thanks for this detailed explanation. As you contrast "Norwegian" and "Norwegian Bokmål" (and I naively assumed people mostly meant Bokmål when saying simply "Norwegian"... at least from a population size point of view), I'd be interested in knowing a bit more about the proportion of the Norwegian population using 3 vs 2 genders. Until now, I've always learnt Norwegian (Bokmål) nouns as common vs neutral, simply noticing the few words that were specifically feminine (and which are a minority, if I'm correct). Any chance you'd be able to comment on the connexion between Norwegian and Icelandic/Old Norse? Edited by vermillon on 12 December 2012 at 2:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 5 of 17 12 December 2012 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't know about Old Norse (or Icelandic), I have not got round to learning those yet.
What I do know is that the transition gender-wise from Dutch to German and to Swedish presents some problems, although the mapping to German for Dutch is much better than it is to Swedish. Within Scandinavia my assumption was basically that of tractor's, although, like I said, I have studied Swedish and not Norwegian. I missed the cognate comment, so thanks for setting me straight. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 6 of 17 12 December 2012 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know. Most people don't speak Bokmål, although they do write it. Most people speak dialects, and the dialects in most of the country have the three gender system intact. The most populous region in Norway is without doubts Østlandet, where a lot of people speak with a mix between a three gender system and a two gender system. The Bergen dialect only has two genders.
Not really, I don't know, but I suspect that there is a very high degree of correspondence. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4846 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 7 of 17 12 December 2012 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cognates don't always have the same gender in Icelandic (Old Norse) and German. While "hundur" and "Hund" ('dog') are both masculine, "köttur" ('cat') is masculine and "Katze" is feminine. Of course there are quite a lot of congruences, but it's not always one-to-one. I have never given this question really thought, I simply learned the gender of words right away. In Icelandic gender is mostly predictable because of some typical endings like -ur for masculines or -a for feminines.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6661 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 8 of 17 13 December 2012 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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But köttur would rather be the kognate of Kater than of Katze? Katze should probably be katta.
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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