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Most logical languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4751 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 113 of 143 14 December 2011 at 5:50am | IP Logged | ||
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ARBOR was feminine is Latin, so árvore (f) is in accordance with that.
The Spanish usage arbol (m.) is the exception. http://latindictionary.wikidot.com/noun:arbor Main Forms: Arbor, Arboris Gender: Feminine Declension: Third 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mashmusic11235 Groupie United States Joined 5501 days ago 85 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese | Message 114 of 143 14 December 2011 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | ||
As for the inanimate plural/feminine singular verb issue, I beleive it's just a coincidence. My thoughts are that proto-Arabic or proto-Semitic had a separate inanimate plural form, which eventually, through the process of simplification, ended up being exactly like the feminine singular. To make an analogy to English, the 3rd person plural verb form (I go/he goes, I read/he reads) looks the same as the pluarl of nouns (book/books), but we know that this happened because of simplification of forms that used to exist separately in Old English. These are just my thoughts, I'm by no means an expert on Semitic languages. Edited by mashmusic11235 on 15 December 2011 at 2:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5132 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 115 of 143 15 December 2011 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
Italian must also be an exception then. Albero is masculine. EDIT: Actually, I just went back and looked in my Garzanti dictionary. Latin (arbore) was masculine. BUT... my Avaliardi Dizionario Etimologico lists it as feminine. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 15 December 2011 at 12:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4849 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes | Message 116 of 143 15 December 2011 at 1:51am | IP Logged | ||
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What I meant is that it's become quite random in the Romance languages, it's ok that in Latin it was either F or M, but it doesn't explain WHY a tree is supposed to be either feminine or masculine, a logical language would be the one that has defines quite specifically: living female beings are feminine, non-living things are neuter and living masc....
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 117 of 143 15 December 2011 at 2:23am | IP Logged | ||
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imo, a logical LANGUAGE is where you can always tell the gender of a noun by its ending. what you describe is a "logical" linguistic view of the world that correlates with modern science.
compared to a stone, a tree is very much a living thing though so there's also a logic in considering it animate. this doesn't have much to do with whether a language can be considered logical. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 118 of 143 15 December 2011 at 3:32am | IP Logged | ||
Or better yet, a logical language is one which doesn't gender nouns. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 119 of 143 15 December 2011 at 3:50am | IP Logged | ||
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sure. i meant that if there are no genders, then you also can tell the gender easily :-))) i just think that genders/classifiers per se don't make a language illogical.
and i suppose the gender doesn't necessarily have to be indicated by an ending... indo-european bias, lol. Edited by Serpent on 15 December 2011 at 3:51am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5137 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 120 of 143 14 June 2015 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||
I remember when I learnt that in Arabic, the sun is female and the moon is male, contrary to the European languages. Glad I live in Indonesia, where nouns are never supposed to be masculine or feminime. Edited by Monox D. I-Fly on 15 June 2015 at 1:37am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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