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Gender articles for nouns - why? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 41 of 55 27 February 2011 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
As I had mentioned in my earlier post, there are languages that organize nouns into classes that go beyond gender. Luganda has 10-17 classes including ones that cover nouns referring to languages or verbal nouns. Other examples of noun classification that go beyond gender are Dyirbal's 4-way distinction (1. masculine and animate; 2. women, water, fire, violence; 3. edible fruits and vegetables; 4. everything else) and Swahili's 8-9 way distinction (1. people; 2. tress, natural forces; 3. groups; 4. artifacts; 5. animals, loanwords; 6. extensions; 7. abstract; 8. gerunds from verbal infinitives). You may find Wikipedia's article on the subject to be a good primer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 43 of 55 27 February 2011 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I suspect it's just that there's not a single person on the planet who isn't acutely aware of the differences between a man and a woman. It makes sense that as genders are lost, the most obvious ones would be the last to go -- hence the late survival or sexual gender in many languages, but the loss of non-sexual genders.
Again, I'd caution against using gender as a synonym for sex when discussing language -- the notion of grammatical gender is not limited to sexual gender, and while I'm all for using vernacular terms and would prefer to say "class" rather than "gender", the word gender is in common use in the literature, and we need to remain clear that it has a very different meaning in linguistics. Yes, linguistics should catch up with Real Life (TM), but we've got to remain clear. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5809 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 44 of 55 31 March 2011 at 6:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I tend to think that it's a relic of our animist past where tribal religions believed
that everything had a spirit in it. I agree that its not useful today. I think any Spanish speaker will understand you if you said "la martillo, el playa, etc." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 5082 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 45 of 55 15 May 2011 at 3:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Because we just know that it's masculine. We, native speakers of languages which have noun genders, we just speak it, without thinking whether it's masculine or feminine. Many people don't consider a hammer being a masculine thing or a feminine thing. I know it might be difficult and unnecessary if you are learning, but that's just the way it is. Many people who don't know about languages will not know what you're talking about if you ask them "why do you think that the hammer is masculine?", because it's so natural for us, the gender must rhyme (at least most of times). For example, in my native language: Hammer - Martelo Martelo ends with the letter O, so it's masculine. O martelo. House - A casa It isn't that difficult. As you said, you don't see a reason for noun genders, but at least in Portuguese, it sounds much better than it would be if it was "A martelo". With the correct gender, the language rhymes and makes more sense to the ears. I'm not saying that because it would be weird if I heard it incorrect, but it really rhymes in our ears. I agree with the weird orthographies. English and French would be the first I'd change if I could. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5809 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 46 of 55 15 May 2011 at 6:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Same in Spanish: El martillo La casa The only exception I can think of is "el aqua" which is for phonetic reasons. (Interestingly, Italian handles it by forming a contraction: "l'acqua") I think most languages have "genders" for objects that don't have an actual gender. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender#Gender_acros s_language_families Anyway, it's just another pattern your mind will absorb with exposure. You will be understood even if you get the gender wrong.
God, yes, those should be fixed. And Pin Yin for Mandarin! Edited by ChiaBrain on 15 May 2011 at 6:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 47 of 55 15 May 2011 at 9:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
La mano, el mapa, la moto, la radio, el sistema. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 48 of 55 15 May 2011 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Actually when I started learning English, it seemed weird to me that it doesn't have genders for many words, most things are neutral. Just as it seemed unusual to me that French only has feminine and masculine and no neuter. It's just a matter of getting used to it.
In some languages there are words that have different meanings in different genders, I'm certain I've seen a few in French, just cannot remember which ones right now. And I don't think it is such a trouble as long as there are rules allowing you to classify most words correctly at first sight, such as the endings. And sometimes I find it quite interesting to compare the differences :-) Edited by Cavesa on 15 May 2011 at 8:49pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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