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Languages with gender tricks | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Dylanarama Newbie United States Joined 5440 days ago 30 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 18 31 October 2010 at 4:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Are there any languages that have gender that also have hundreds of tricks to figure out what gender the word is? I know French has a few but there are also exceptions to them, is there a language with no exceptions at all making it extremely easy to figure out what the gender is?
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| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 2 of 18 31 October 2010 at 4:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Russian is pretty straightforward with its genders. For the most part, if a noun ends in a consonant it's masculine, if it ends in "а" or "я" it's feminine, and if it ends in any other vowel it's neuter. The only tricky part is nouns that end in "ь"; most are feminine but a sizable minority is masculine. There are also a handful of exceptions to the rules which aren't too difficult to remember since there aren't a lot of them; e.g. "имя" (name) and "время" (time), which are neuter. Edited by Levi on 01 November 2010 at 5:11am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5345 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 18 31 October 2010 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | ||
And even then there are a few guidelines to help you determine whether a noun ending in -ь is masculine or feminine: It is masculine if... - it denotes male persons (парень, король - guy, king) - it is a month (январь, февраль, июнь - January, February, June) - it ends in -тель (двигатель - engine, motor) It is feminine if... - it denotes female persons (мать, дочь - mother, daughter) - it ends in -жь, -шь, -чь or -щь (ночь, рожь, помощь - night, rye, help) - it ends in -ость, -есть (молодость, свежесть - youth, freshness) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5592 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 4 of 18 31 October 2010 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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And I guess it is too much to hope that all the Romance languages have the same gender assigned to their respective words, i.e. a particular word will have the same gender whether in French, Spanish, etc.
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| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5191 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 18 31 October 2010 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Arabic the definite article ("al-") doesn't change with gender or number, so that makes things easier.
However it does have masculine and feminine nouns (but no neuter). Most often these are obvious - to form a feminine noun you just add "a" (actually its "-at" but the final "t" isn't pronounced if the word is in isolation) so you have "malik" = "king", "malika" = queen, "sultan" = "sultan" "sultana" = sultaness. Sometimes (rarely) there is no clue in the word e.g. bayt = house (masc.), daar = house (fem.) And one odd thing is that if the word is a part of the body which comes in pairs (e.g. eyes, hands) the noun is usually feminine. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Préposition Diglot Senior Member France aspectualpairs.wordp Joined 5115 days ago 186 posts - 283 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC1 Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 6 of 18 02 December 2010 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Arabic is indeed rather straightforward, expect when it comes to broken plural, where I find it almost impossible to guess what the gender will be if I don't have the singular word.
French could really do with some patterns for deciding what's feminine and what's masculine as well. On the other hand, I think Farsi has no gender whatsoever, so surely that makes it the best language to learn if you don't want to bother with that! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emiliana Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5115 days ago 81 posts - 98 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Arabic (classical) | Message 7 of 18 02 December 2010 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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@arabic: well, you have to learn the broken plurals anyway. In my opinion it is rather impossible just to guess which broken plural belongs to which singular form. So then you can learn the gender at the same time. And anyway, are not all broken plurals masculine?? i am not sure but I can't think of any female broken plural at the moment.
@farsi I think the best language to learn if you don't want to cope with a complicated is English :). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5321 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 8 of 18 02 December 2010 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm afraid not. While it's true that most female nouns have regular plural forms, some of them have broken plurals, too. E.g., جريدة \ جرائد (=newspaper) and مدينة \ مدن (=city). BTW, there are also a handful of nouns that can be either masculine or feminine. For example ṭarīq طريق (=way), روح rūḥ (=spirit) and حال ḥāl (=status) can be used with either masculine or feminine adjectives. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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