5 ms·

The grammatical gender of nouns is mostly arbitrary. A famous example is "key", which is feminine in Italian and Spanish but masculine in German. This is also t

by qsort 6y ago

The grammatical gender of nouns is mostly arbitrary. A famous example is "key", which is feminine in Italian and Spanish but masculine in German. This is also the case in Latin with its neuter. My Latin is very rusty, but IIRC from high school, there are a lot of nouns that refer to "neuter" things, but are actually masculine or feminine, for example "vis" (= strength) is feminine.

leephillips 6y ago
“mostly arbitrary” I’ll say: el clítoris.
- hnedeotes 6y ago
  C'mon, we all know it's an introverted dick.
- stevula 6y ago
  Latin has mentula and verpa, both feminine words referring to a male appendage.
  - jan_Inkepa 6y ago
    Giacomo Cassanova had a bit on this: “When asked by an English poet who was at the table to read the ancient couplet Discite grammatici cur mascula nomina cunnus/ Et cur femineum mentula nomen habet [Teach us, grammarians, why vagina (cunnus) is a masculine noun/ And why penis (mentula) is feminine], Giacomo answered it with a witty pentameter of his own invention: Disce quod a domino nomina servus habet [It is because the slave always takes the name of his master].”
bandie91 6y ago
well noun gender does seem disconnected from the nature of the thing only in modern languages, IMO. because of how each word evolved. in antique languages, grammatical gender is closely tied to the word's morphology, especially to the word's ending in Latin. in essence there is not really gender in languages, just some group of nouns which behaves very grammatically similarly. they just happened to be suspiciously congruent to the genders in words indicating things which do have gender in those languages which were studied when linguists invented the term of grammatical gender. "Key" in Italian and Spanish comes more or less directly from Latin 'clavis' (fem), I guess, they are being romance languages; in German however it may have a different root (aber https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schl%C3%BCssel#etymwb-1 https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schl%C3%BCssel#etymwb-1 says something about Latin origin too). Most likely its form was more similar to other masculine words when its gender stabilized. The arbitrarity is among naturally gender-less things, as I observed. People, professions, animals have the "right" grammatical gender overwhelmingly. There was also a process in Romance languages. Neuter words tended to become masculine because many of them behaves more like masc than fem in most cases. thats why some woman body parts are grammatically masculine.
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  > aber https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schl%C3%BCssel#etymwb-1 https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schl%C3%BCssel#etymwb-1 says something about Latin origin too) It doesn't say that "Schlüssel" has a Latin origin (see also https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schl%C3%BCssel https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schl%C3%BCssel for an etymology). It says that some terms related to Latin "clavis" have corresponding German terms formed by somewhat analogous derivation from "Schlüssel". Most prominently "Schlüsselbein", literally "key bone", from "clavicula" (clavicle).
  - bandie91 6y ago
    danke for the interpretation. i hoped someone clarifies it for me :)
bodhiandphysics 6y ago
Some languages do have non arbitrators genders. In Dravidian languages male and female nouns usually only refer to humans. In one dravian language, kvi, the feminine was lost and so the only masculine things were adult human males, leading to amusing fact that early ethnographers didn’t realize a major god was actually a goddess!
legulere 6y ago
A lot of grammar is not arbitrary but just has a very rich history that is not apparent and sometimes not even traceable anymore. Schlüssel basically is a combination of schließen (close) and the ending -el. Here this is the third meaning of -el listed on wiktionary: "suffix in agent and instrumental nouns". (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-el#German https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-el#German). As far as I can see all of the words that have this version of the -el suffix are masculine. Languages are full of those rules that just are not apparent anymore, because they are so deeply layered and often apply to only a few words that they are not useful to learn.
mattkrause 6y ago
German will raise you the grammatically neuter “Mädchen”, meaning girl or maiden.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  That's because of a systematic rule that all words ending in the "chen" morpheme are neuter.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    To expand on that: -chen is usually indicating a diminutive form of another word. Some examples (also observe how that affects the vowel in the first syllable): die Wurst, das Würstchen (the sausage, the small sausage) der Mann, das Männchen (the man, the little man) der Becher, das Becherchen (the cup, the small cup; this is an example in which the first vowel is phonetically close enough to the following "e" in "-chen" that no vowel change occurs (we do not even have umlauts for "i" or "e" in german)).
  - mattkrause 6y ago
    Sure, there's a certain logic to it. I just think it's an unimpeachable example of the disconnect between biological and grammatical gender.
- derriz 6y ago
  I’m reminded of the Mark Twain essay, The Awful German Language where he says: “In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl.” Despite its age the essay* is well worth a read for native English speakers struggling to learn German. * https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html
  - qayxc 6y ago
    Mark Twain was making fun - the essay isn't supposed to be taken seriously. His conclusion would also be wrong, since the grammatical gender has nothing to do with he biological gender - it's the gender assigned to all diminutive forms, regardless of grammatical gender. E.g. "der Vater" (the father) becomes "das Väterchen" just as well without loosing his proverbial balls in the process.
jhoechtl 6y ago
If you take die Klaviatur you have it female in german as well. It's just that Schlüssel is of different semantic origin compared to clave
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  Klaviatur is feminine not because of the etymology of the root, but rather because of the ending -tur.

by qsort 6y ago

leephillips 6y ago

“mostly arbitrary” I’ll say: el clítoris.

hnedeotes 6y ago
C'mon, we all know it's an introverted dick.
stevula 6y ago
Latin has mentula and verpa, both feminine words referring to a male appendage.
- jan_Inkepa 6y ago
  Giacomo Cassanova had a bit on this: “When asked by an English poet who was at the table to read the ancient couplet Discite grammatici cur mascula nomina cunnus/ Et cur femineum mentula nomen habet [Teach us, grammarians, why vagina (cunnus) is a masculine noun/ And why penis (mentula) is feminine], Giacomo answered it with a witty pentameter of his own invention: Disce quod a domino nomina servus habet [It is because the slave always takes the name of his master].”

bandie91 6y ago

well noun gender does seem disconnected from the nature of the thing only in modern languages, IMO. because of how each word evolved. in antique languages, grammatical gender is closely tied to the word's morphology, especially to the word's ending in Latin. in essence there is not really gender in languages, just some group of nouns which behaves very grammatically similarly. they just happened to be suspiciously congruent to the genders in words indicating things which do have gender in those languages which were studied when linguists invented the term of grammatical gender. "Key" in Italian and Spanish comes more or less directly from Latin 'clavis' (fem), I guess, they are being romance languages; in German however it may have a different root (aber https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schl%C3%BCssel#etymwb-1 https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schl%C3%BCssel#etymwb-1 says something about Latin origin too). Most likely its form was more similar to other masculine words when its gender stabilized. The arbitrarity is among naturally gender-less things, as I observed. People, professions, animals have the "right" grammatical gender overwhelmingly. There was also a process in Romance languages. Neuter words tended to become masculine because many of them behaves more like masc than fem in most cases. thats why some woman body parts are grammatically masculine.

tom_mellior 6y ago
> aber https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schl%C3%BCssel#etymwb-1 https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schl%C3%BCssel#etymwb-1 says something about Latin origin too) It doesn't say that "Schlüssel" has a Latin origin (see also https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schl%C3%BCssel https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schl%C3%BCssel for an etymology). It says that some terms related to Latin "clavis" have corresponding German terms formed by somewhat analogous derivation from "Schlüssel". Most prominently "Schlüsselbein", literally "key bone", from "clavicula" (clavicle).
- bandie91 6y ago
  danke for the interpretation. i hoped someone clarifies it for me :)

bodhiandphysics 6y ago

Some languages do have non arbitrators genders. In Dravidian languages male and female nouns usually only refer to humans. In one dravian language, kvi, the feminine was lost and so the only masculine things were adult human males, leading to amusing fact that early ethnographers didn’t realize a major god was actually a goddess!

legulere 6y ago

A lot of grammar is not arbitrary but just has a very rich history that is not apparent and sometimes not even traceable anymore. Schlüssel basically is a combination of schließen (close) and the ending -el. Here this is the third meaning of -el listed on wiktionary: "suffix in agent and instrumental nouns". (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-el#German https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-el#German). As far as I can see all of the words that have this version of the -el suffix are masculine. Languages are full of those rules that just are not apparent anymore, because they are so deeply layered and often apply to only a few words that they are not useful to learn.

mattkrause 6y ago

German will raise you the grammatically neuter “Mädchen”, meaning girl or maiden.

umanwizard 6y ago
That's because of a systematic rule that all words ending in the "chen" morpheme are neuter.
- _Microft 6y ago
  To expand on that: -chen is usually indicating a diminutive form of another word. Some examples (also observe how that affects the vowel in the first syllable): die Wurst, das Würstchen (the sausage, the small sausage) der Mann, das Männchen (the man, the little man) der Becher, das Becherchen (the cup, the small cup; this is an example in which the first vowel is phonetically close enough to the following "e" in "-chen" that no vowel change occurs (we do not even have umlauts for "i" or "e" in german)).
- mattkrause 6y ago
  Sure, there's a certain logic to it. I just think it's an unimpeachable example of the disconnect between biological and grammatical gender.
derriz 6y ago
I’m reminded of the Mark Twain essay, The Awful German Language where he says: “In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl.” Despite its age the essay* is well worth a read for native English speakers struggling to learn German. * https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html
- qayxc 6y ago
  Mark Twain was making fun - the essay isn't supposed to be taken seriously. His conclusion would also be wrong, since the grammatical gender has nothing to do with he biological gender - it's the gender assigned to all diminutive forms, regardless of grammatical gender. E.g. "der Vater" (the father) becomes "das Väterchen" just as well without loosing his proverbial balls in the process.

jhoechtl 6y ago

If you take die Klaviatur you have it female in german as well. It's just that Schlüssel is of different semantic origin compared to clave

tom_mellior 6y ago
Klaviatur is feminine not because of the etymology of the root, but rather because of the ending -tur.