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Gender articles for nouns - why? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 49 of 55 15 May 2011 at 9:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Two interesting facts:
1: Studies have shown that despite grammarians insisting that grammatical and biological genders have nothing to do with each other, the gender assigned to an object affects the way native speakers think of it. One study I read about found that people speaking a language where bridges are masculine tended to describe a bridge with typical male attributes like "strong" whereas speakers of languages that assign feminine gender to bridges tend to assign more feminine attributes to them, such as "elegant". 2. Swedish has two genders, like French or Spanish, but due to an interesting historical merger, the genders are not masculine and femnine. Rather they are "either (masculine or feminine)" or "neither (masculine nor feminine)". Isn't that a hoot? Actually, here's a 3, too, for good measure. I love how Cantonese has no gender even in pronouns. The word 佢 can mean 'he', 'she' or 'it', depending on circumstances. My sifu sometimes has trouble with this when he speaks English, referring to his wife as "he". So don't come saying English has gotten rid of its genders completely! Edited by Ari on 15 May 2011 at 9:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5957 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 50 of 55 17 May 2011 at 1:19am | IP Logged | ||
An article listing some of these for French 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zecchino1991 Senior Member United States facebook.com/amyybur Joined 5259 days ago 778 posts - 885 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian | Message 51 of 55 18 May 2011 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | ||
But "aqua" is still a feminine word, isn't it? Just because it has "el" doesn't mean it's masculine. Edit: "Agua," sorry. I just woke up lol. Edited by zecchino1991 on 18 May 2011 at 7:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Uthnapistim Diglot Newbie Finland Joined 5695 days ago 19 posts - 25 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: German, Indonesian | Message 52 of 55 18 May 2011 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||
Most Finns experience exactly the same problem when learning English. Gender for nouns/pronouns is a completely foreign concept for native Finnish speakers, so at first it is a pain to try to remember to refer to men as he/his/him and to women as she/her. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 53 of 55 19 May 2011 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
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This I don't get. How hard can it be to assign he/his/him to men and she/her/her to women? Really? They're not arbitrary terms like el/la, der/die/das, even Chinese measure words (which in the beginning make little sense), but rather two super-obvious words for females and males. To me, this is as hard to get as if somebody would mix up black and white, major and minor keys, hot and cold....
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5208 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 54 of 55 19 May 2011 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
Well, if your whole life you have used the same pronoun for both men and women (and both she/her and he/him), I would think it could be hard to get used to distinguishing them in speech, especially when they are phonetically close like she/he. It's not that they don't remember who is male and who is female. Also remember that in some languages pronouns are barely used, since you can use the person's name or title instead. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chirel Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5311 days ago 125 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French | Message 55 of 55 28 May 2011 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | ||
It's not about 'getting it', it's more like when you try to learn and discern that there are two fonemes when there used to be one. Imagine thinking there are two categories: humans and animals/things (corrsponding to Finnish pronouns hän/se). To learn a language with different pronouns for women and men means you have to split the human category. Even though it is quite easy and logical to do, I find that I sometimes make mistakes, especially when I'm tired or trying to speak fast. The two-category system overrides the three-category system. Also it is not always so simple. I found it very unfair when at age nine I learned that our whole French group was to be referred as 'ils' because there were nine girls and one boy. How does that make sense? Or that babies are masculine in French, in German its neuter and that makes more sense to me. I really love the fact that I can talk about someone without having to reveal their sex. It's not that I have something to hide, but I've noticed that I go through some trouble in English trying to find a way around these pronouns. I just find that it is very handy that there's only one pronoun for humans. If I need to emphasize the gender, then Ill just say 'woman' or 'man'. Having two gender-related pronouns seems like stressing the issue in an unnesessary way. Also if someone has read the troll book by Johanna sinisalo. In Finnish the trolls gender is not revealed, but when the book was translated, the translator and the writer had to make a decision, and it was difficult, because not revealing the gender was part of the idea of the book. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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