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Gender in languages

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QiuJP
Triglot
Senior Member
Singapore
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Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 17 of 27
12 January 2009 at 4:04pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
QiuJP wrote:
The gender of nouns depends on each individual language and there is no "standard" gender even for the closely related languages.

Here is an interesting one:

In French, all the names of planets are of female gender, whereas in Spanish and in Italian, the gender of the name of planets depends on whether it ends in a "a", "o" or a constant.   


Have you seen the principles by which Slavonic languages determine gender?


I know that the gender of Russian words is determined by the endings.
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Chung
Diglot
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Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 18 of 27
12 January 2009 at 5:35pm | IP Logged 
The post that started this thread was:

Ancientweird wrote:

I have a question for those of you who've learned several languages from the same family that use gender classifications for nouns.

Are the genders for specific words the same across the board?

For example: in Germanic languages is the word for "dog" the same gender in all Germanic languages.

I am just curious as to whether or not gender is only an issue with the first learned language in a set.


QiuJP wrote:
Chung wrote:
QiuJP wrote:
The gender of nouns depends on each individual language and there is no "standard" gender even for the closely related languages.

Here is an interesting one:

In French, all the names of planets are of female gender, whereas in Spanish and in Italian, the gender of the name of planets depends on whether it ends in a "a", "o" or a constant.   


Have you seen the principles by which Slavonic languages determine gender?


I know that the gender of Russian words is determined by the endings.


That principle in Russian is also applicable to other Slavonic languages.

It also means that a close cognate of a Russian word in another Slavonic language will likely share the same gender as the Russian word. Within Slavonic languages at least, gender does not depend on individual languages as you posted. Apparent exceptions to the rule are explainable by looking at comparative or historical linguistic evidence and aren't "out-and-out" exceptions.

For example, "nose" is masculine in all Slavonic languages. You probably know from your Russian studies that nouns ending in consonants are often masculine.

nos (Czech, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian) нос (Belorussian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian) нiс (Ukrainian)

"hand" is feminine in Slavonic languages.

ruka (Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak) ręka (Polish) roka (Slovenian) рука (Belorussian, Russian, Ukrainian) ръка (Bulgarian) рака (Macedonian)

"name" is neuter in Slavonic languages.

jméno (Czech) imię (Polish) meno (Slovak) ime (Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian) имя (Belorussian, Russian) име (Bulgarian, Macedonian) iм'я (Ukrainian)

The statement that there is no standard gender for closely-related languages doesn't match with what's observed within Slavonic languages.
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Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
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Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
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 Message 19 of 27
13 January 2009 at 5:10am | IP Logged 
The Side Effect wrote:
Thank God gender in Arabic is so simple.

It's got nothing on Quechua -- they even have the same pronoun for "he" and "she"!
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GibberMeister
Bilingual Pentaglot
Groupie
Scotland
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 Message 20 of 27
13 January 2009 at 4:56pm | IP Logged 
Romance is generally easy as the parent language is more recent - the daughter languages will nearly always agree on gender.

Span. La noche
Fr.   La nuit
It.   La notte

there are a few exceptions like 'milk'

All ar efeminine excpet Portuguese and Gallego where it's 'o leite'.
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Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7160 days ago
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20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 21 of 27
13 January 2009 at 6:40pm | IP Logged 
GibberMeister wrote:
Romance is generally easy as the parent language is more recent - the daughter languages will nearly always agree on gender.

Span. La noche
Fr.   La nuit
It.   La notte

there are a few exceptions like 'milk'

All ar efeminine excpet Portuguese and Gallego where it's 'o leite'.


I always thought that we had to say "le lait" in French.
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Leopejo
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Italy
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Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English
Studies: French, Russian

 
 Message 22 of 27
13 January 2009 at 7:28pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
GibberMeister wrote:
Romance is generally easy as the parent language is more recent - the daughter languages will nearly always agree on gender.

Span. La noche
Fr.   La nuit
It.   La notte

there are a few exceptions like 'milk'

All ar efeminine excpet Portuguese and Gallego where it's 'o leite'.


I always thought that we had to say "le lait" in French.

Or "il latte" in Italian.

My (parents'?) old French edition of Le Petit Prince has, as a dedication: "Ricordati, si dice la fleur".
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DaraghM
Diglot
Senior Member
Ireland
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Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian

 
 Message 23 of 27
14 January 2009 at 5:13am | IP Logged 
GibberMeister wrote:
Romance is generally easy as the parent language is more recent - the daughter languages will nearly always agree on gender.


Apart from milk, there's also colour,

FR: la couleur (F)
SP: el color (M)
IT: il colore (M)
PR: a cor (F)
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danielnikolic
Diglot
Newbie
Croatia
basic-croatian.blogs
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Speaks: Croatian*, English

 
 Message 24 of 27
15 January 2009 at 10:03am | IP Logged 
Some are, some aren't. Noć "night" is feminine in Croatian as is Latin nox (with the same meaning). However, Croatian and Slovenian are quite close but some words that are clearly cognates have different genders...


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