European languages have genders???

wolf4 : « The words "job" or "gang" would remain in French as "le job" or "le gang". »

En Europe c'est <le job> et <le gang>, mais en Amérique je crois qu'on dit <la job> et <la gang>. À vérifier.

Une recherche rapide sur gougueule donne :

<le job> → 82 %
<la job> → 18 % (inusité en France)

<le gang> → 49 %
<la gang> → 51 % (inusité en France)

job is not used in Italian, Gang is feminine, hence la gang but it's not that used

<<le globuslakimkhlat or la globuslakimkhlat>>

Why on earth would you want to use that word rather than translate it or use an equivalent? I fail to see how it being English or Martian makes much of a difference really, it's not like you need any knowledge of the original language to come up with you own description for the new item. In fact you don't even need to know the original word at all. See the word ordinateur for instance, it is not a mere translation of "computer".

I also find it amusing that you have to use Martian as an example, as if to imply actual languages other than English (or French) never invent anything or never gave native names to their inventions.

With that sait I think by default a name gets the "neutral" gender, which in fact is similar to masculine, so that would probably be "un globuslakimkhlat".

<<Just to get back to the question originally posed by "Super Korean" about "how do they decide genders for new words and new concepts?" I would like to say that I think this question was a good question to ask and an interesting one. >>

Maybe it was but the examples he gave were stupid : "mobile phone" may be a new concept but it's by no means a new word, in fact it's not even a word at all. "Phone" (or its equivalent in other languages) has existed for a couple of centuries already while "mobile" is merely an adjective which simply gets the same gender as the noun, so there is really nothing to decide.

>>I love genders, they're so sexy, girl is neutral in German: das Mädchen,
woman too: das Weib, that's why german girls are so masculine, because they'r neutral ;) Poor little mouse is feminine in German: Mickey ist eine kleine Mouse

In my observation, German girls in general are similar to a large percentage of their counterparts in the US. Far less brunettes as in southern Europe, but not everyone is a blonde.

Genders obviously have nothing to do human genders. How are the native speakers of languages without genders? Are they genderless?

<< Poor little mouse is feminine in German: Mickey ist eine kleine Mouse

what is Minnie then, both are feminine :) lol >>

lol all you want but Micky is not feminine in your sentence.

In my observation, German girls in general are similar to a large percentage of their counterparts in the US. Far less brunettes as in southern Europe, but not everyone is a blonde.


German girls are beautyful;-)

Far less brunettes as in southern Europe, but not everyone is a blonde.


yeah and the sea is blue! or green? :-)

Xie : « Having that said, English genders are such that... I said it didn't have genders. Enough said. »

Ben non, mon pote. Si tout substantif est susceptible d'être pronominalisé et qu'il existe quatre pronoms à la 3e personne du singulier — un par genre —, c'est bien qu'il y a quatre genres en anglais.


Rappel :

1]
<he> → masculin sémantique
<she> → féminin sémantique
<they> (valeur singularisante), <he or she>, <(s)he>, <he/she> → neutre faible sémantique (épicène)
<it> → neutre fort sémantique

2]
L'ensemble ouvert des substantifs est réductible à un ensemble fermé de quatre éléments, appelés pronoms de la 3e personne du singulier. Cette opération de réduction porte un nom : la pronominalisation.

I know Sir Greg has no interest to write in English but always French... and the second fact is I still can't read French, sorry, je suis desolé. Anyway, I do take the view that English genders, ok, let me say English does have genders, according to Sir Greg, are fairly similar to Chinese's. Now, almost all English nouns are assigned to a "gender" for semantic purposes, not grammatical purposes as in French and German.

And I can say that, in history, written Chinese put little emphasis on females, and starting from the modern era, the feminine pronouns gained an equal status, even though we still don't have the politically correct English third person singular "they" instead of masculine "he". Although Chinese was never anything like English and French and German, now it happens that Chinese and English genders are almost identical. It's even more so if you consider simplified Chinese where the pronoun for animals and for things are merged into one for things only. Both now don't have the French/German-style gender agreement, but only semantic gender agreement. Every Chinese knows that, to describe a person or a profession, it must be either masculine or feminine, depending on the gender of the person we describe. And for things and animals, we have the suitable pronouns - though we don't really have the neutral. For plurals, we also have plural agreement, though it only affects pronouns, not verbs. Chinese is still different from English, in that while no grammatical gender is ever needed, in many contexts gender is not clear, and we often emphasize the feminine (doctor [supposedly male] vs female doctor, literally), less the singular "they".

For such reasons, if you say English genders are largely (or even purely) semantic, I'd say they sound natural to me, since I do think in semantic genders only in Chinese. In Chinese, males are always masculine, females are always feminine, animals and things are always animals and things. Transgender people are masculine/feminine depending on which they prefer. Pets may be masculine/feminine depending on whether their owners like "it" or s/he. Masculine plural is also the collective plural, like in French, prevailing over the feminine plural.

From what I know of Spanish and Latin, the "genders" of most words just evolved from the sounds of Latin, in fact many masculine nouns were actually neutral in Latin, but the "um" ending became "o" in Spanish.

Xie : « Although Chinese was never anything like English and French and German, now it happens that Chinese and English genders are almost identical. It's even more so if you consider simplified Chinese where the pronoun for animals and for things are merged into one for things only. Both now don't have the French/German-style gender agreement, but only semantic gender agreement. »

Merci pour ces infos très intéressantes.

Tu sembles opposer l'accord sémantique (en genre) à l'accord sémiologique ou grammatical (en genre). Mais le phénomène de l'accord est purement grammatical (sémiologique) et demeure en dehors du sens (sémantisme).

Par exemple, dans la phrase :
<la sentinelle, un homme d'une trentaine d'années, était affairée à nettoyer ses jumelles>,
l'adjectif <affairée> se rapporte au féminin grammatical <la sentinelle> dont le référent est <un homme d'une trentaine d'années>, c'est-à-dire un être humain de sexe masculin.

Mais <la sentinelle>, en plus d'être un féminin grammatical, est aussi un neutre faible au niveau sémantique : <la sentinelle> peut être un individu des deux sexes, exactement comme <the dancer> anglais.
Le problème, dans une langue comme le français ou l'allemand, c'est qu'il n'existe pas d'accord sémantique mais uniquement un accord grammatical. Le cas de l'anglais est encore plus radical dans la mesure où l'accord est rarement manifesté par un marquage grammatical quelconque.

Que voulais-tu dire par accord sémantique en genre (semantic gender agreement) ? Tu peux nous donner des exemples en chinois stp ? Merci.