Language & Grammar discussion

I've always been fascinated by the idea that words had gender, a concept that I first encountered when I started studying Spanish.

I found it odd that a man's shirt was la camisa while a woman's dress was el vestido.

It struck me again today while I was re-reading Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea"

This pasage brought it to mind: “He always thought of the sea as 'la mar' which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as 'el mar' which is masculine.They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.”

Are there other phrases or words that are sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine? If so, what are your favorites?

French has masculine and feminine but I don't have any good or favorite examples. il and elle and I think la and le.

English used to have feminine and masculine versions of professions, but the feminine versions were done away with in favor of the masculine forms; somewhat ironically, this was done in a conscious effort for gender equality (the forms that can still be used acceptably are "actress" and, to a lesser degree, "waitress").

Some of these words had a pretty nice phonetic sound, like "inventrix" (masculine "inventor") and creatrix (masculine "creator").

And for foreign languages, I've always found the German gender system to be unique.

In German, "he/she/it" are all used as "it" based off the "gender" of the noun. "Das Mädchen" (the girl) is a genderless noun, so girls are referred to as "it", while der Rock (the skirt) is masculine, so skirts can be referred to has "he/him".

Well some languages don't even have different words for she and he. And I have understood that countries and ships are often referred to as "she".

Hurricanes used to always be feminine, but the National Weather Service got politically correct a few years back and changed it to every other (masculine, feminine, etc.) so the damage looked more equal opportunity.

Daniel J. wrote: "Some of these words had a pretty nice phonetic sound, like "inventrix" (masculine "inventor") and creatrix (masculine "creator")."

I like the word "baxter," found today as a surname, which originated in Middle English to identify a female baker.

Interesting!

American English was revised to remove gender. Why is it being brought back?

Doug wrote: "American English was revised to remove gender. Why is it being brought back?"

Especially with the aggressive moves by some people to remove gender from themselves and everyone else - or maybe to multiply it... (Sorry - I probably ought not bring politics into this...)

I'm NOT suggesting that it be "brought back."

I've just always been fascinated by the way that language has developed. Language is just a tool for communicating and as with any tool it sometimes need to be updated. However, there's an appeal to old tools and how they did some jobs that we just no longer do.

I was actually asking more about concepts like "the Sea" that were so big and changeable that they defied gender classification. In a way that's what Hemingway's quote was about.

Thar she blows! (spoken of the wind)

Ken wrote: "That she blows! (spoken of the wind)"

Naw, that's whales - when the whale comes to the surface to breath, the exhaled air comes out as a spout, enabling the whalers to see where the whale is. But there it is, the gender thing, whether or not the whale itself is male or female, which could not be determined at such a distance.

In my mother tongue Bengali we do not have gender specification. But Hindi does have. So whenever Bengali travel out of their state & have to speak Hindi it is touch & go whether we are getting things right. I am not sure about the South Indian languages.. there are at least 4 main languages spoken in the various Southern states.

Sorry, autocorrect changed "Thar" to "That" in "Thar she blows!" Spoken of Moby Dick, who apparently should've been called Moby Jane.

I want to see Moby Dick and Moby Jane run. Run, Moby Dick, run! See Moby Jane run! Moby Dick was a sperm whale, but if he were a humpback whale, he could have spy-hopped or sounded instead. Spy-hop, Moby Dick, spy-hop! Sound, Moby Jane, sound!

Now I'm getting just plain silly...

On another unrelated note but still on whales, the shape of the exhaled spout (when "thar she blows") revealed the species of whale as well.

Less silly, but also less gender-related, and less language related.

Sonali wrote: "In my mother tongue Bengali we do not have gender specification."

The Finnish language has no gender specific pronouns such as "he/him" or "she/her", which I have always found very interesting. The concept of a language having no gender specifications is somewhat difficult for me to wrap my mind around; as a native English speaker I'm used to having gender specific pronouns when referring to people in the singular.

Out of curiosity Sonali, are pronouns also genderless in Bengali?

The Finnish language is the weirdest looking language I've ever seen. We have Finnish friends, so I learned enough about it to marvel. It has an interesting family tree, but I forget the branches now.

Finnish belongs to Finno-Ugric languages with Estonian and many smaller languages, primarily in Russia. They are Finnic languages, Hungarian is Ugric.

And I don't really see a need for gender specific pronouns, as it rarely matters if one is talking about a man or a woman. In some languages like French there is also "elles" for all female groups but English doesn't have that. For example in this one "he" is used because the singer is female but the song doesn't specify that it's really a man she is thinking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYNDA...

Tytti wrote: "I don't really see a need for gender specific pronouns, as it rarely matters if one is talking about a man or a woman"

I think gender specific pronouns are useful, but I also think English would benefit from adopting a genderless singular pronoun in addition to its gender specific pronouns. I know "they/them" can be used for this purpose, but it seems like an inefficient solution.

The Swedish language adopted a genderless singular pronoun in 2010, so it is possible. And if I remember correctly, Swedish adopted their new pronoun from Finnish.

Well, maybe they are sometimes useful but really only when talking about a man and a woman. Besides, Finns usually call people "it" anyway while talking casually, so s/he isn't even used, or maybe only when referring to pets and other (cute) animals, or in a bit old-fashioned way of addressing someone. I have found s/he to bring more trouble than they are worth.

I'm not sure if it's actually being used in everyday speech in Sweden, and no, that pronoun is "hen", in Finnish the word is "hän", and in Swedish he is "han", she "hon".

What is not acceptable about "it" "thou" and "thy" pronouns? I'm just asking.

In the US? Thou and thy are antiquated.

But not in school when we read Shakespeare. Or when I break out my King James Bible for a little Ecclesiastes.

Doug wrote: "What is not acceptable about "it" "thou" and "thy" pronouns? I'm just asking."

Actually that's another difference between modern English usage and other languages. We've sort of dropped the whole "second person/familiar" pronouns thing. Spanish still uses the second person a lot.

Yes Daniel J, pronouns are genderless too.What we have however, is respect/relationship denoting pronouns. The ones used for those younger to us/lower in the social ladder is different from the ones used towards an equal & another one towards someone older/more respected /higher in society..'tui,tumi,apni (you) ' or' tora, tomra, apnara (plural - you) '.....Don't know if that is clear enough...

Finnish also uses singular and plural you, though plural you when used as a sign of "respect" is pretty rare. It is still used when addressing the president and like in formal occasions, also in the military I believe, and by some people when addressing unknown older people (but not in a sauna, there we are all naked and equal *) or in the customer service. But in most places people just call each other by their first names anyway.

* Never served in the military like most Finnish men because I am a woman and it's not mandatory for us but I have heard somebody telling how he had, as a conscript, met the colonel (or something) in a sauna, and they had talked like equals. And the next day it was business as usual when they were both in uniform.

It seems to me that all the various pronoun defining can seriously hurt creative speech because it forces you to define your own gender maybe opposite of what you are to fit the narrative and that then that has to changed as other character types come and go in the narrative and this would be horrible when three or more of various rank and gender are in the room. Further confusion happens when the mix of the persons conversing constantly changes. The entire mentality of the relationships would be constantly evolving and confrontational and possibly insulting. The resulting atmosphere would be to put one gender in an inferior level of respect which would probably be women unless only women were present.

This might be why men and women in many older societies did (do) not assemble together much sometimes to the point of even dining separately. Or actually, the language cart may have gotten in front of the assembly horse a million years ago. I am going to study this.

:-) Possibly I don't understand what we are talking about because I do not speak in a language that is very both gender and rank sensitive. :-)

Doug wrote: "...The resulting atmosphere would be to put one gender in an inferior level of respect..."

I think there WAS a bit of sexism built into the rules. As I recall, if one uses an article for a collection of items and even one of the items in the collection is masculine (e.g. el gato) then the entire group is referred to with a masculine article (los)

One thing about studying a foreign language, one does learn a bit about how the people who speak it think.

Doug wrote: "This might be why men and women in many older societies did (do) not assemble together much sometimes to the point of even dining separately."

But that wasn't the case with all societies. Here people of the whole household even bathed together, both men and women, until at least the late 19th century. Not sure how much that has to do with the "equal nature" of the language...

Also studying another language teaches you some things about your own language.

Good thoughts. Good discussion.

Oh, this is a very interesting topic!
It is so unpredictable what the gender is going to be when we deal with inanimate objects, and there is so much variation from language to language!
After discussing this in the first class of Introduction to Linguistics I wrote a blog post with some cute examples here: http://kuno.co.il/en/does-grammatical...

My teacher said those were "romantic languages." Are they changing at all?

Doug wrote: "My teacher said those were "romantic languages." Are they changing at all?"
Romance languages. :) Sure, all languages change all the time.

Olga wrote: "Doug wrote: "My teacher said those were "romantic languages." Are they changing at all?"
Romance languages. :) Sure, all languages change all the time."

I understand, but when new nouns and such come in are they labled geneticly with semantic properties and old ones that are objectionable dropped into disuse?

There isn't much semantics to the gender of inanimate objects. It's much more likely the gender will be determined, e.g., by the suffix. (For instance, a word that ends in -a will be feminine, a word that ends in -e, neuter, one that ends with a consonant, masculine, etc.) Words definitely aren't dropped unto disuse just because their gender does not match semantics.
I hope I understood the question correctly.

Olga wrote: "There isn't much semantics to the gender of inanimate objects. It's much more likely the gender will be determined, e.g., by the suffix. (For instance, a word that ends in -a will be feminine, a wo..."

Yes you did.
i think it would make poetry, etc. more difficult if you have to add description to objects that are preconceived by a gender suffix or article. Especially if you do not know or are forced to reveal whom is being objectified beforehand, would it not?

Doug wrote: "i think it would make poetry, etc. more difficult if you have to add description to objects that are preconceived by a gender suffix or article"
Well, languages like Spanish or Russian have wonderful poetry, so gender definitely does not pose a problem. :) But there is some evidence that people's perception of inanimate objects is affected by grammatical gender.

Referring to post #1 in this thread, my favorite is Greek goddess Oxypete (swift wing) for speed. She is female in Greek legend zooming from island to island.