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Languages with gender tricks | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 18 03 December 2010 at 12:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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If you have problems with French gender then the simplest rule is to learn Italian or Spanish. There you have o's and a's to guide you, and normally - but not always - it's the same gender in French.
OK, it takes some time but... 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 18 03 December 2010 at 11:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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If you have trouble with the gender of nouns, then you should learn English or Turkish because in both languages the nouns don't have genders, not even the professions.
Turkish / English examples: ögretmen = teacher (male or female) sekreter = secretary (male of female) mühendis = engineer (male or female) A good alternative would be to learn Esperanto, which does have genders, but they are very logical and therefore easy to learn. la vir-o = the man la vir-ino = the woman la knab-o = the boy la knab-ino = the girl la kato = the cat la vir-kato = the male cat la sxafo = the sheep la vir-sxafo = the male sheep Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 03 December 2010 at 11:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5116 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 11 of 18 03 December 2010 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't have an answer, but I have the same question in a specific case: German. I read somewhere that there are tricks to know the genders of German nouns. Does anyone know if that's true, and if so, what the tricks are? It seems like memorising them will be very hard, so if there's another way, I'm all for it!
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 12 of 18 03 December 2010 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
See this link for German. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5116 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 13 of 18 03 December 2010 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! That looks helpful. :) 1 person has 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 14 of 18 06 December 2010 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh and for French genders, you have those silly names that are masculine in the singular, and feminine in the plural - "un amour fou" but "des amours folles".
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| marmite Triglot Newbie Portugal Joined 5214 days ago 35 posts - 57 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, French | Message 15 of 18 06 December 2010 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In Portuguese, a lot of feminine nouns end in -a, and a lot of masculine ones in -o. If you know Latin, there's also a lot of clues, like how a lot of second declension neuters became masculine. Sometimes, there's no real clue (at least I don't think so), but looking at the article sometimes also helps.
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 16 of 18 07 December 2010 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, it's too much to hope for. Noun gender has undergone less changes than some other features, but just as the vocabulary and grammar has been constantly diverging, some words have switched gender and recent borrowings into one or other language have had gender assigned either at random, based on the sound of the word or based on the gender of the word in the donor language. In general though, if in doubt, assume they're the same and you'll be right the vast majority of the time. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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