# a question for language experts



## casiopea (20 Oct 2006)

As an english speaker one of the first unusual concepts you come across learning most european languages is the the idea of a noun being masculine or feminine.  Can anyone tell me why there isnt more consistency in this across languages? By that I mean why isnt "a table" the one sex across french, italian, spanish, romansch etc.  Even languages stemming from the same roots (say latin or germanic languages) have large variations, for example in italian the sea is "il mare"  (m), but in french is "la mer" (f).  Any idea?


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## ClubMan (20 Oct 2006)

Why do some _English _speakers refer to things like cars and boats as "she"?


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## NorfBank (20 Oct 2006)

Does it depend on the legs of the table?


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## Sarah W (20 Oct 2006)

NorfBank said:


> Does it depend on the legs of the table?


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## Superman (20 Oct 2006)

ClubMan said:


> Why do some _English _speakers refer to things like cars and boats as "she"?


Not too sure - but slightly more interestingly is the fact that in Irish, despite the fact that a car is masculine it is referred to as "she".

Will write a fuller answer to the original post later.


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## casiopea (20 Oct 2006)

ClubMan said:


> Why do some _English _speakers refer to things like cars and boats as "she"?



Google Clubman ;o)

Boats are traditionally referred to as "she".  I got a couple of answers but this one I liked the best:

"For thousands of years, we have gone to sea. We have crafted vessels to carry us and we have called them by name. These ships will nurture and care for us through perilous seas, and so we affectionately call them "she."

Ive never heard cars referred to as a her, herbie yes, her no.

After scanning more results there is also this:

"I am trying to find out why boats are always referred to as the female gender.. When and why did this practice start?
According to Yarns of the Sea, Legends, Myths, and Superstitions: Although women were considered to bring bad luck at sea, mariners always use the pronoun "she" when referring to their ships. Whether its proper name is masculine, or whether it is a man o'war, a battleship, or a nuclear submarine, a ship is always referred to as "she."

This old tradition is thought to stem from the fact that in the Romance languages, the word for "ship" is always in the feminine. For this reason, Mediterranean sailors always referred to their ship as "she", and the practice was adopted over the centuries by their English-speaking counterparts.

One source suggests that a ship "was nearer and dearer to the sailor than anyone except his mother." What better reason to call his ship "she"?"


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## Satanta (20 Oct 2006)

casiopea said:


> Ive never heard cars referred to as a her, herbie yes, her no.


Go talk to any used car salesman, some of the first words out of their mouth will be "She's a.... ".
You can throw in great little runner, lovely straight car, great price, lovely motor or a million other common sayings in there after.


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## pops (20 Oct 2006)

Agree with Superman, it could be because in Irish anything in which a person can travel (boat, car, airplane) is referred to as 'she'.


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## casiopea (20 Oct 2006)

pops said:


> Agree with Superman, it could be because in Irish anything in which a person can travel (boat, car, airplane) is referred to as 'she'.



But other nationalities (i.e. the english) refer to boats as "she".  Its not an exclusively irish thing.


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## Brendan Burgess (20 Oct 2006)

What is the only word in English with separate masculine and feminine forms? 

Brendan


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## ClubMan (20 Oct 2006)

Brendan said:


> What is the only word in English with separate masculine and feminine forms?
> 
> Brendan


Really - I'd never have guessed that that was it!


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## bankrupt (21 Oct 2006)

ClubMan said:


> Really - I'd never have guessed that that was it!


 
I thought he said that what was it?


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## dontaskme (21 Oct 2006)

Brendan said:


> What is the only word in English with separate masculine and feminine forms?


 
blond and blonde?

As for the femininity of cars, yeah, I always thought that was a motor industry thing.

As to the original question, I have no idea. German has a neuter gender as well to add to the confusion. And some words' gender is determined by their endings or their beginnings e.g. most German nouns beginning Ge- are neuter and almost all nouns ending -ung are feminine.


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## Superman (21 Oct 2006)

fiance, fiancee?


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## Superman (21 Oct 2006)

Gender is fairly consistent across families of languages.
So for example almost everything that is masculine or feminine in German is in the common gender in Danish.  And one can almost always guess the gender of French words by knowing the ending of Italian words or the Latin.  

In languages themselves, there are some differences in some dialects of languages regarding gender.  
So for example in some areas of Southern Germany and Switzerland one says "der Butter" rather than "die Butter". 

One thing is that when new words are created (for example for new inventions etc.), they have to be assigned a gender - this is done in different ways.  Hammer's Grammar (the major English book on German Grammar) has an interesting section regarding the assignment of gender in German.

For example one says _Der Crepe_ in German - despite the fact that_ le crepe_ is crepe paper in French and (following la crepe) it should be _die Crepe_.  But because Germans are thinking about "Der Pfannkuchen", it gets assigned a masculine gender. 

Interestingly, as English words don't have a gender, words which are used in different contexts are assigned different genders depending on word association with the closest German equivalent.
Der Service (following der Dienst) for e.g. service in a restaurant, or 
Das Service (following das Geschirr) for a dinner/tea service.

The creation of new words also mean means that people don't know what gender should be assigned to some modern words - Should Nutella be Das Nutella - as it is a brand name and brand names are normally neuter, or Die Nutella as it is die Haselnusscreme?

In French, the masculine gender is more neutral and used predominantly for the creation of new words - "le weekend" for example.

There are some theories regarding masculine and feminine - masculine being more "active", feminine more "passive" - so in German "-er" words are masculine. Der Computer for example.  Similarly in French "-eur" words are masculine.

but gender is inherently quite unpredictable - e.g. 
Die Gabel, Der Loeffel, Das Messer,
le couteau, la fourchette .

So I think the answer to your question lies somewhere there - 
sometimes the structure of the word itself - the ending for example is sufficiently strong to dictate the meaning; sometimes the idea it represents is sufficiently strong to dictate.  Precisely which idea behind the word should come to the fore is then a matter to be decided by posterity. 

I'll see what other stuff I can remember later.


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## ClubMan (21 Oct 2006)

Superman said:


> fiance, fiancee?


Never heard of that word. Maybe you're thinking of the _French _word fiancé in it's masculine and feminine forms?


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## Gordanus (21 Oct 2006)

well German is unlike the Romance languages in having 3 genders - msac, fem, and neutral.

Hey Brendan, what is the answer????  (We know it's not 'Brendan'!)


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## delgirl (21 Oct 2006)

Gordanus said:
			
		

> well German is unlike the Romance languages in having 3 genders - msac, fem, and neutral.


... and the gender can change - *die (f)* Frau becomes von *der (m)* Frau (dative).



> Hey Brendan, what is the answer???? (We know it's not 'Brendan'!)


Yes, please put us out of our misery.  

I agree with dontaskme - blond and blonde.


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## extopia (21 Oct 2006)

Brendan said:


> What is the only word in English with separate masculine and feminine forms?



Well sticklers might discount fiancé/fiancée, blond/blonde and words such as masseur/masseuse for being French words.

But there are lots - actor/actress (anglicised version of French original), waiter/waitress, and god/goddess come to mind immediately. 

Hey - what about Matt/Mattress


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## ClubMan (21 Oct 2006)

[broken link removed]


> Not only do the nouns (_acteur_, _actrice_) and the pronouns (_il_, _elle_) denote the gender of their [broken link removed], but so do the articles (_un_, _une_) and the adjectives (_grand_, _grande_). This never occurs in Modern English (with the exception of blond/blonde), which therefore does not have grammatical gender. Old English had grammatical gender (example below), but with time its gender inflections were simplified, began to be confused with one another, and eventually merged.


Pity - I was wondering what the feminine form of _Brendan _was!


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## extopia (21 Oct 2006)

Brenda?


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## ClubMan (21 Oct 2006)

extopia said:


> But there are lots - actor/actress (anglicised version of French original), waiter/waitress, and god/goddess come to mind immediately.


These spelling variants don't seem to denote *grammatical *gender according to Wikipedia:


> Noun classes may be expressed on nouns and pronouns alone, or in other parts of speech as well. An example of the former are the English words _actor_ and _actress_, where the suffix _-or_ denotes a male person or a person of unknown gender (masculine), and the suffix _-ress_ (derived from French _-rice_) denotes a female person (feminine). This type of noun inflection is very rare in English, but quite common in other languages, including most of the Indo-European family, to which English belongs. Modern English normally does not mark nouns for gender, but it does express it through the third person singular personal pronouns _he_ (male person), _she_ (female person), and _it_ (object, abstraction, or animal), and their other inflected forms.
> 
> When gender is expressed on other parts of speech, besides nouns and pronouns, the language is said to have *grammatical gender*. For example, in French the sentences _Il est un grand acteur_ and _Elle est une grande actrice_ mean "He is a great actor" and "She is a great actress", respectively. Not only do the nouns (_acteur_, _actrice_) and the pronouns (_il_, _elle_) denote the gender of their referent, but so do the articles (_un_, _une_) and the adjectives (_grand_, _grande_). This never occurs in Modern English (with the exception of blond/blonde), which therefore does not have grammatical gender. Old English had grammatical gender (example below), but with time its gender inflections were simplified, began to be confused with one another, and eventually merged.


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## extopia (21 Oct 2006)

Oh come on Clubman, that's not what Brendan asked!


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## Superman (21 Oct 2006)

delgirl said:


> ... and the gender can change - *die (f)* Frau becomes von *der (m)* Frau (dative).



That's a change in case - not gender.  If it changed gender as well as case it would be _von dem Frau_.


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## europhile (21 Oct 2006)

ClubMan said:


> Never heard of that word. Maybe you're thinking of the _French _word fiancé in it's masculine and feminine forms?



its


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## europhile (21 Oct 2006)

Women call cars "it".
Men say "she". It's just macho posturing.


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## extopia (21 Oct 2006)

europhile said:


> its



Touché, monsieur.


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## europhile (21 Oct 2006)

Madam.


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## ClubMan (21 Oct 2006)

europhile said:


> its


How embarrasing...


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## europhile (21 Oct 2006)

Morto!


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## extopia (21 Oct 2006)

Madame, surely?


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## dontaskme (23 Oct 2006)

ClubMan said:


> These spelling variants don't seem to denote *grammatical *gender according to Wikipedia:


 
Woohoo, got it right!!!!
The other examples are nouns.
The blond man.
The blonde woman.
QED


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