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Gender articles for nouns - why? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 17 of 55 24 February 2011 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What they said, 'specially Chung.
The way I experience it, grammatical gender is part of a word, but a part you sometimes express in one way or another, and at other times you don't. Just as sometimes you say "I'm gonna" and at other times "I am going to". In a way, it will never make sense, other than knowing that a long long time ago it developed because there were some factors that make it sensible at that time, and that some languages use it, for example to minimize the number of words you can expect to follow after an initial article or adjective form and people are just used to it. In Spanish for example, (lexicalized) diminuitive and augmentative forms are used to express a lot of different things, like the size or importance of an object or event, the situation you're in or it gives hints at the speaker's opinion. Using different genders for different forms of what used to be the same word helps to avoid confusion. Because people aren't always completely alert and focused adults at the height of their knowledge and ability, and still have to be able to communicate effectively most of the time, many or maybe all languages have incorporated tactics like this to minimize error. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maurelio1234 Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6081 days ago 61 posts - 92 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 18 of 55 25 February 2011 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
Nobody knows, that's the truth :) In fact, that is a very common misunderstanding: gender is usually associated to words not to objects. Just taking German as an example, if I see a word that ends with "-ung" I know for sure that it is feminine, no matter what it represents. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Monte Cristo Newbie United States Joined 5182 days ago 26 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English* | Message 19 of 55 25 February 2011 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You know what, earlier Anglophones probably thought the same thing... thus why we don't have any genders. :)
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| Segata Triglot Groupie Germany Joined 5172 days ago 64 posts - 125 votes Speaks: German*, Japanese, English Studies: Korean, Esperanto | Message 20 of 55 25 February 2011 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
Der Schwung. Damn native speakers, being all smug and stuff Edit: According to google, there's also "Der Mao Tse Tung" ;) Edited by Segata on 25 February 2011 at 11:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| t123 Diglot Senior Member South Africa https://github.com/t Joined 5612 days ago 139 posts - 226 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans | Message 21 of 55 26 February 2011 at 12:09am | IP Logged | |||||
And der Sprung as well. Those are the only 2 common ones I know of and compound nouns using them of course. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 22 of 55 26 February 2011 at 12:40am | IP Logged | |||||
This is not an exception, it is just that the rule is not entirely correct: Nouns using the affix -ung are feminin, root: acht, verb acht-en, noun Acht-ung. Sprung or Schwung are not like this, it is just a coincidence that the root contains ng, schwing(en) -> Schwung, spring(en) -> Sprung. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 23 of 55 26 February 2011 at 1:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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There is a fundamental difference between "illogical" spelling and "illogical" grammar. Spelling is nothing but a convention and unphonemic spelling systems could easily be changed to more phonemic systems (this has been done in Turkish when they switched to the Latin alphabet). In that case, one has to weigh the advantages (easier spelling) against the disadvantages (loss of the etymological information), but in the end it's a decision that the speakers of the language have to take.
It's very different when it comes to grammar. The grammar of a language just evolves in a certain way and there is no way to change it. Whether you like it or not, German has grammatical gender and if you wish to learn it, there is simply no way around it. Whether grammatical gender is a useful concept is disputable. I personally think that German could well do without it, but in other languages like Latin it has the effect that it significantly frees up word order, making the language more flexible. I can relate to the troubles of learning illogical features of languages, and personally I'm more drawn to "logical" languages like Turkish or Persian, but if you want to read, say, German or Russian literature in the original version, you will just have to accept that they are not going to win an award for being exceptionally logical. Maybe irregularities also are something that can make a language interesting. I tried to learn Esperanto before and it felt extremely sterile and "bloodless". Sure, I can appreciate its logical structure and regularity, but somehow it lacks character. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 24 of 55 26 February 2011 at 1:22am | IP Logged | |||||
For a native speaker or someone who has learned the language well, it makes sense. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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