English and Gender(s)

Candy: >>Damn right you can't tell the gender, which suits me fine. I don't like it that in German I have to be a 'Lehrerin'. Why is it important to call me a female teacher? I'm just a teacher!<<

Candy: >>I really like the fact that in English you can say 'my partner' without having to say if it's a man or woman. OK, usually it becomes obvious from the personal pronouns you use, but it gives people a chance to be more private about their private life if they want to.<<

Let me venture a very subjective remark. To me, the genderlessness of profession names in English is somewhat too impersonal. This might be a cultural thing. My own language, Hungarian, also lacks grammatical gender completely, but nevertheless there is a female form to all profession names, formed by adding "-nő" ("woman") to the name of the profession. Thus: "doktornő" (female doctor), "tanárnő" (female teacher), etc, much in the vein of Italian "-essa", as in "dottoressa", "professoressa", or German "-in", as in "Lehrerin". This is also used as a polite form of addressing the given person, not just as the designation of her profession. It bothers me a little that you can't say "madam teacher" or "madam doctor" in English, just Miss, Mrs or Ms followed by the person's name, or just "doctor", "judge", etc. - it is this last bit that I find cold and impersonal. So the uniformity of profession names regardless of sex is not always to the advantage - but as I said, this is my subjective opinion, and depends much on the culture you were reared in.

As for partnership terms, as far as I know, languages with grammatical gender also use some gender-neutral terms: for example, French definitely uses "partenaire" for both sexes, albeit with a different possessive adjective depending on sex. I'm not sure if "mon partenaire" can be used uniformly if you don't want to give away the sex of your partner.

>>Well, you might think you're being objective with that comment but you're not. You're merely making a subjective remark on "complexity." <<

Not at all. Consider French: "un", "une" as opposed to "a"; "le", "la" as opposed to "the"; "ma", "mon" as opposed to "my". With articles alone it's readily observable that grammatical gender entails greater complexity.

"Not at all. Consider French: 'un', 'une' as opposed to 'a'; 'le', 'la' as opposed to 'the'; 'ma', 'mon' as opposed to 'my'. With articles alone it's readily observable that grammatical gender entails greater complexity."

For whom?

For native French speakers who use grammatical gender without even giving it much thought?

Or for you?

For the French language itself. Grammatical gender intrinsically involves greater complexity than genderless grammar since adjectives, nouns and even verbs have to accord to gender. It generally adds no meaning to words, so in itself is useless.

This has nothing to do with the subjective matter of what I or French speakers find "hard" or "easy".

"This has nothing to do with the subjective matter of what I or French speakers find 'hard' or 'easy'."

Oh, but it does. Indeed, you are making a subjective judgment just by saying, "It generally adds no meaning to words, so in itself is useless."

This to me implies you are the native speaker of a language that does not employ such a gender system and you are merely projecting your own linguistic bias i.e., "my language doesn't use this so why should theirs?"

You simply cannot make "objective" judgments on language this way.

Language is not the same as mathematics. Every language - including English - exhibits grammatical features which might strike the speaker of another language as "useless" or "complex."

But these features are intrinsic to the language regardless.

>>Oh, but it does. Indeed, you are making a subjective judgment just by saying, "It generally adds no meaning to words, so in itself is useless." <<

But it normally doesn't add meaning; for that purpose it is useless. It's very rare for a French word to take on a different meaning based on a difference of gender. How many words can you find in French that exhibit this quality?

If a foreigner says "une chapeau verte", it is understood he means "un chapeau vert". The wrong use of gender here has no implications to semantics. It's not my opinion, it's an objective statement.

Furthermore, I've rarely had any problems with Anglophones speaking French using mostly the masculine gender.

I have to say that grammatical gender in any form has never seemed particularly useful to me (I'm a native English speaker). But at the same time, I find that I've more or less got used to it — I say 'la belle maison' automatically, and 'le beau maison' would just look and sound totally wrong to me now, although it probably wouldn't have done a few years ago. I also find that I just sort of 'know' whether something is masculine or feminine now in French in most cases now and it isn't something which I really give much thought to at all anymore.

I agree with Candy about how some people feel that English has too many tenses — that's a comment I often hear from my French friends as well. For example, in French, there is no difference between 'I speak', 'I am speaking' and 'I do speak' — they all translate as 'je parle'. Likewise, there is only really one way in French of translating 'I watched the telly', 'I have watched the telly' and 'I did watch the telly' — j'ai regardé la télé. But for me, the difference is important.

The way I see it is that, for every grammatical feature which exists in one language, there will be another language which doesn't have it.

To a native speaker of Chinese, any tenses at all will likely seem like a pointless complication, as will the distinction between 'a dog' and 'the dog'.

To a native speaker of Swedish, verb conjugation according to person (e.g. I speak vs. he speaks) will largely seem arbitrary and unnecessary.

To a native speaker of Finnish, strict word order as is often found in English will likely seem pointless.

And to a native speaker of Japanese, the concept of singular and plural will likely seem like an unnecessary distinction.

I wonder if it would be possible to create an artificial language in which none of the grammatical features found in one language which are considered pointless by speakers of another were included. I somehow doubt it, as even Esperanto doesn't come even remotely close.

"I wonder if it would be possible to create an artificial language in which none of the grammatical features found in one language which are considered pointless by speakers of another were included."

There's just no way to do this.

Any artificial language you create will have to rely on either:

1. word order; or

2. inflection; or

3. a combination of both.

Aspects of any or all of these options would automatically become the basis for quibbling in somebody's language about "pointless grammar features."

By the way, your last posting was very good.

Thank you! ^_^

Je pense qu'il est inexact de dire que l'anglais a perdu les genres grammaticaux. Ce que l'anglais a perdu (ou plutôt : ***PRESQUE*** perdu), c'est le marquage des genres grammaticaux.



L'ensemble des substantifs anglais (inanimés ou animés, animaux ou humains etc) est nécessairement réductible à un ensemble fini constitué de trois éléments (voire quatre, à la rigueur) :
{tous les substantif anglais : inanimés et animés} —> {he ; she ; it ; he or she}.



Par conséquent si l'ensemble {tous les substantif anglais : inanimés et animés} est réductible à un ensemble de 3 ou 4 éléments dont la principale caractéristique est le genre sémantique :

—> <he> : masculin sémantique
—> <she> : féminin sémantique
—> <it> : neutre fort sémantique
—> <he or she> : neutre faible sémantique
(on pourrait ajouter <they>, grammaticalement pluriel mais sémantiquement singulier, faisant fonction de neutre faible sémantique),

alors l'ensemble {tous les substantif anglais : inanimés et animés} est affecté par le genre grammatical. Toutefois ce genre grammatical n'est pas marqué (pas de suffixation nominale, les articles définis sont invariables en genre et en nombre, idem pour les adjectifs). Encore que certaines paires telles que <hunter>/<huntress>, <emperor>/<empress> ou <actor>/<actress> font ressurgir les reliques d'un marquage d'opposition masculin sémantique / féminin sémantique. Il existe même des trinômes masculin sémantique / féminin sémantique / neutre faible sémantique : <chairman>/<chairwoman>/<chairperson> ou <salesman>/<saleswoman>/<salesperson>.




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Benjamin : les nuances que l'anglais exprime avant tout par le verbe sont volontiers rendues par d'autres moyens en français. Pour te les présenter avec précision, il faudrait que tu mettes les expression anglaises en contexte.

"Je pense qu'il est inexact de dire que l'anglais a perdu les genres grammaticaux. Ce que l'anglais a perdu (ou plutôt : ***PRESQUE*** perdu), c'est le marquage des genres grammaticaux."

I would agree with "greg" here. Grammatical gender continues to hang on by the skin of its teeth in English, but it is there nonetheless.

We've had ferocious discussions in this very thread before over this.

The most obvious relict of grammatical gender in English is the continued use of the neuter gender to refer to both animate and inanimate objects ("snail" and "table").

This simply does not follow the pattern for "natural gender" or, more properly, "natural sex."

The last "Guest" posting was mine.

Easterner : « As for partnership terms, as far as I know, languages with grammatical gender also use some gender-neutral terms: for example, French definitely uses "partenaire" for both sexes, albeit with a different possessive adjective depending on sex. I'm not sure if "mon partenaire" can be used uniformly if you don't want to give away the sex of your partner. »

À l'origine Fr <partenaire> etait un masculin grammatical et un neutre faible sémantique. On peut dire <le partenaire féminin> et l'expression <le partenaire masculin> n'est pas un pléonasme.

Fr <partenaire> fonctionne comme Fr <personne> : ce sont tous deux des neutres faibles sémantiques. Seuls leurs genres grammaticaux diffèrent : masculin pour l'un (quel que soit le sexe réel de l'individu) et féminin pour l'autre (qu'il s'agisse d'un homme ou d'une femme).

Mais ce qui différencie encore Fr <partenaire> de Fr <personne>, c'est le fait qu'on puisse dire Fr <la partenaire> alors que Fr *<*le personne> est impossible.
Autrement dit, Fr <partenaire> a 2 genres sémantiques : 1/ neutre faible sémantique <le partenaire> = {homme ; femme} (dans ce cas il s'agit d'un masculin grammatical) — 2/ féminin sémantique <la partenaire> = {femme} (dans ce cas il s'agit d'un féminin grammatical).
Par conséquent l'expression *<la partenaire féminine> est un pléonasme (<la> et <féminine> sont redondants) tandis que <le partenaire féminin> et <le partenaire masculin> sont logiquement justifiés.
Le cas de <la personne> est différent : il possède un genre sémantique et un seul (neutre faible) et dispose d'un genre grammatical unique (féminin).

Pour en revenir à <mon partenaire>, cette expression dans la bouche d'un homme vivant avec une femme est impossible. De même, une tierce personne évoquant le partenaire de cet homme, et sachant qu'il s'agit d'une femme, ne pourrait dire *<*son partenaire>.
La raison est simple : connaissant le sexe de chacun des deux protagonistes, <partenaire> perd nécessairement sa qualité de neutre faible sémantique (sexe inconnu) — et donc de masculin grammatical — et acquiert celle de féminin sémantique (à condition, évidemment, que le partenaire en question soit une femme) — et donc de féminin grammatical.

PS : <conjoint> fonctionne exactement comme <partenaire> sauf qu'il est nécessairement morphologiquement marqué, <conjointe>, quand il est utilisé comme féminin grammatical.

I find that Esperanto has a rather strange gender system. It's sort of like English in the sense that the articles and adjectives do not agree according to gender, but the way in which it is organised has always seemed rather bizarre to me. For example:

instruisto — teacher, male teacher
instruistino — female teacher
geinstruisto — specifically gender-neutral teacher

And it gets worse:

patro — father
patrino — mother
gepatro — parent

But then it doesn't always quite work:

bovo — bovine animal (e.g. cow/bull/oxen/etc.), implies male
bovino — cow (female)
virbovo — bull (lit: man bovine animal)
ta?ro — bull
gebovo — specifically gender-neutral bovine animal

Arrgh! This is by far my least favourite feature of Esperanto. I think it's good that there is the opportunity to be either gender-neutral or gender specific, but I cannot understand why it's been constructed this way around — something can be either specifically female or specifically gender-neutral, but it's harder to be specifically male.