Genders in Languages

[Mr Stoofer]

I was thinking about languages in which every word has a gender (such as most European languages other than English).

Does anybody know:

1. Does the same word generally have the same gender in all languages? e.g. "la maison" (house) in French is feminine. Is the word for "house" feminine in German, Italian, Spanish, etc?

(The answer to this question can't be yes for all languages since German has a neutral gender but Romance languages don't.)

2. How/why did existing words get their genders?

3. When a new word is coined, who decides its gender? And how?

[GH]

1. no

[MatthewV]

With Russian (which has a neutral gender also) you just look at the last letter. a or ya means it is a "female" word. e or o is "neutral" and everything else (with some exceptions of course) was "male".

Genders are really nothing more than changing "a" to "an" when the next word begins with a vowel. Making this change causes words to flow smoothly.

[arandomguy]

La casa. Donatello was the coolest.
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[Lauritz Melchior]

It's das Haus in German, which is Neuter.
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2500th member give or take 3

[armchair linguist]

sure, there are nouns which are gendered in a Romance language, but neuter in those languages which have the neuter gender. but my absolute favorite twist is in German:

der Mond (the moon, masucline!)
die Sonne (the sun, feminine!)

[Dread Pirate Westley]

I always liked

das madchen (The girl, neuter)

Yeah, but I don't know how to put the umlaut in.

[Lucky Wizard]

DPW: A special character may be typed by holding down the alt key and typing the right 4-digit code between 0000 and 0255. Of course, you need to find the right number; I usually just use trial and error (0221... nope, not it. 0225... not it either. 0226... 0227, 0228 -- that's it!) but a list of them may be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8859 . Or you could just copy and paste from Character Map. (And indeed, 0228 is ä.)

On the actual topic:

The usual rule in Spanish is that words ending in -o are masculine, and words ending in -a or -dad (and I believe a few other endings) are feminine. (There are a few exceptions, but only a few.)

I happen to have a short wordlist with Spanish, French, and German translations. I compared the nouns on the list. All 29 of them have Spanish and French translations listed, though two do not have German translations listed. In only 3 of the 29 cases does the Spanish gender differ from the French gender. Of the 27 with German translations listed, 8 are neuter, leaving 19, including the three whose Spanish and French equivalents have diferent genders. I compared the other 16 German words to the Romance-language words, and got that 5 of the German words have different genders from the Romance languages. Looks like the language family does have an influence.

Incidentally, are there any cases where two words in a language have the same meaning but different genders? I think I've seen some in Spanish but can't recall any offhand.

And as one last thought, I can't resist quoting this:

[jesternl]

[esme]

[Jeffurry]

[GH]

According to Babelfish, le radio translates as "the radio operator," while la radio translates as "the radio." Interesting. I don't know how one would indicate a female radio operator.

[Lucky Wizard]

I've now found at least one case of the same-meaning, different-gender thing in Spanish: for the "look/aspect" sense of "appearance", my dictionary gives "el aspecto" and "la apariencia".

As for the "radio" thing in French, Spanish has something similar: "el Papa" means "the Pope", while "la papa" means "the potato". Once, just before the Pope visited Miami, a Miami company made Spanish-language shirts that were meant to say "I saw the Pope", but they chose the wrong definite article, and so the shirts said "I saw the Potato".

[Tahnan]

[Jack_Ian]

While we're on the subject of articles.
JFK once made a famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.
This actually means "I am a jelly doughnut".
He should have said "Ich bin Berliner", meaning "I am a from Berlin".

[Ningal]

Enh. I seem to recall reading that "Ich bin ein Berliner" was actually valid for the meaning he wanted it to have, other amusing possibilities aside.

And now, for previous posts that have probably been forgotten by their makers:

[MatthewV]

[Ningal]

Well, yes, but that still doesn't mean it's anything to do with euphonic considerations. And adjectives don't change "to sound better", they change because they're part and parcel of the noun phrase and so have to agree with its head.

[MatthewV]

But the core reason for making those changes is to make everything flow smoothly (sound better)

[Ningal]

...I think this is the bit where it stops being worth it trying to explain any further.

[MatthewV]

Well, I can't think of an example where being correct makes the words harder to say. But I am also being narrow minded and only thinking about Russian.

[Ningal]

Well, "hard to say" is so subjective as to be completely meaningless, really. As for euphony and gender being at odds with each other, I pointed up Spanish earlier. In Spanish, feminine nouns that begin with an /a/ sound take the otherwise masculine definite article "el" for euphonic reasons, though their gender would dictate the harder to say (for Spanish speakers, anyway!) "la".

[just a girl]

[MatthewV]

I haven't heard Boosh mess up Spanish yet.

[Tahnan]

[Ningal]

*laughs* I'm a linguistics major, which probably explains that. A puny undergrad, but we all have to start somewhere.

[VisMaior*]

Good thing words have no gender in Hungarian

[wordcross]

I shall, then, abstain from visiting Hungary.
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[Ningal]

You probably wouldn't want to learn Hungarian anyway. I think it was specifically designed to break foreign learners' brains.

[wordcross]

the next post has the goods. this one did, but it double posted, so now it doesn't.
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[wordcross]

For some reason, i feel like jumping in on this thread now, after it's been around for long enough for people to have forgotten its existence.

Anyway, just wanted to say that Linguistics in and of themselves don't interest me terribly at the moment. I am, however, very interested in learning multiple languages, especially ones that are drastically different from English. I think it would be awesome if i could learn: Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, at least one African Language, and a smattering of basics in other European languages, just so i can say i have.

I think, if i had that kind of training, linguistics would become much more interesting to me. I'd have first hand experience with whatever examples would come up.

Mostly, i think, this is because I'm an intuitive sort of person, and language comes to me intuitively most times, but linguistics does not. But if i knew lots of different languages, it would be easier for me to see the differences and similarities and thereby make those intuitive leaps that i'd need to progress in a study of linguistics.

This has no bearing on the conversation, mostly likely, but as i said, i figured i'd pop in and drop my two cents on the floor somewhere.

cheers!

oh, also, it doesn't hurt that i'm a pretty fair mimic of accents.
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