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Is gender transferable? | ||
Tags: Gender | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5923 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 1 of 9 27 May 2009 at 1:38am | IP Logged |
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I'm studying German and it occured to me that perhaps the gender of nouns is somewhat transferable from my knowledge of French/Spanish/Italian. I know German has three genders, just wondering if the masculine/feminine nouns were similar in gender to those of romance languages. And is this possible with other language combinations?
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 9 27 May 2009 at 2:18am | IP Logged |
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Not really. There is some overlap with the Swedish common/neuter genders, though (where the vocabulary is "the same"). I doubt that even closely related languages such as Spanish and French share the same idea of gender.
Some info about gender in German: http://www.skrause.org/webdesign/handson/secondpage.htm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jar-ptitsa Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5898 days ago 980 posts - 1006 votes Speaks: French*, Dutch, German | Message 3 of 9 27 May 2009 at 12:16pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with jeff, but I think that French and Spanish share more of things for example in Fr and Esp the sun is masculine, but in German feminine. The moon's the inverse: in Fr and Esp she's feminine, but in German masculine LOL!! In Fr and Esp a book's masculine but in German a book's neuter.
Also some plurals, for example in Fr and Esp glasses (the things which you use for see, not for the drinks) are feminine plural, but in German feminine singular (as in Dutch). therefore, you can use Fr/Esp or Ger/Dutch when you don't know and have to guess, but Fr -> Ger or Esp-> Ger would be not accurate I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6034 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 4 of 9 27 May 2009 at 6:18pm | IP Logged |
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I'm just glad French has only 2 genders ;p.
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6903 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 5 of 9 27 May 2009 at 7:42pm | IP Logged |
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The best thing you can do is to forget about the gender in Romance languages when you're speaking German. It doesn't mean there aren't any overlaps (for example, the nouns with -tion anding are feminine in both French and German; most of nouns with -e ending are feminine in German etc.) - it's just too confusing. Edited by Julie on 27 May 2009 at 7:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 magister Pro Member United States Joined 6603 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 9 27 May 2009 at 8:45pm | IP Logged |
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You may find this piece from National Public Radio to be of interest. It briefly discusses some findings about how native speakers of different languages may have different perceptions of an object based on that object's grammatical gender.
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| ribas Pentaglot Newbie Brazil blogmarceloribas.blo Joined 5860 days ago 37 posts - 48 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish, French, German Studies: Italian, Mandarin | Message 7 of 9 28 May 2009 at 2:03pm | IP Logged |
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I am a native speaker of Portuguese and have studied both German and Spanish. I don't believe there is a connection between the gender in German and Romance languages. When learning German I was told to learn each word with the definite article so as to memorize the gender. For instance: car-->das Auto (instead of simply Auto).
Even among romance languages you cannot trust your known language for gender-guessing all the time. Example: In portuguese, tree is "a árvore" while in Spanish it is "el arbol". 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6446 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 8 of 9 28 May 2009 at 4:42pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with Julie and ribas: Your best bet is to just ignore any potential matches, and just learn the gender for each word in each language. While there is some overlapping, there's just as many words which have opposite genders. Don't rely on them being the same to aid in your learning. Edited by josht on 28 May 2009 at 4:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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