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Most Interesting Grammar
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35 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5

CheeseInsider
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5123 days ago
193 posts - 238 votes

Speaks: English*, Mandarin*
Studies: French, German

Message 33 of 35

19 November 2010 at 10:06pm | IP Logged

Arekkusu wrote:

Can anyone think of a language with articles and no gender, apart from English?

Also, I believe most languages -- if not all -- that do not have a system of noun classification (genders, noun classes or noun classifiers [like Chinese or Japanese]) have some system of declension or cases. Again, English is the only exception I can think of.

English has gender. Sure, the influence of gender is quite small, but it's still there. Girl and boy come into mind. If there was no gender in English, why do we say "The girl is here, she brought a cake." and "The boy is here, he brought the cake." so yeah... We still have gender, it's just really weak.
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CS
Groupie
United States
Joined 5129 days ago
49 posts - 74 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Icelandic, Latin, French

Message 34 of 35

23 November 2010 at 3:34pm | IP Logged

English does have noun classes, in that plurals may be formed in various ways, e.g.
book/books
man/men
deer/deer
alumnus/alumni

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thephantomgoat
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United States
Joined 5472 days ago
52 posts - 103 votes

Message 35 of 35

24 November 2010 at 4:56am | IP Logged

CheeseInsider wrote:

Arekkusu wrote:

Can anyone think of a language with articles
and no gender, apart from English?

Also, I believe most languages -- if not all -- that do not have a system of noun
classification (genders, noun classes or noun classifiers [like Chinese or Japanese])
have some system of declension or cases. Again, English is the only exception I can
think of.

English has gender. Sure, the influence of gender is quite small, but it's still there.
Girl and boy come into mind. If there was no gender in English, why do we say "The girl
is here, she brought a cake." and "The boy is here, he brought the cake." so yeah... We
still have gender, it's just really weak.

Not to mention cars, ships, and boats are often gendered female ("She's a beaut!").
English also has numerous terms to indicate the sex of non-human animals. Among them:

filly / colt
mare / stallion
cow / bull
doe / buck
sow / boar
hen / rooster

And that's only scratching the surface.

As far as adjectives go, "blonde" is gendered female and "blond," male. But this
distinction is no longer commonly made, symbolic of the fact that English has changed
from a highly inflected language with noun gender to an isolating one that preserves
only hints of its former noun gender system.

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