# He-dog and she-cat



## origumi

Hello

In my native language some animals has a "default gender". A dog would usually be "he", a cat "she". That is, seeing such animal in the street one would say (and think) כלב (male) for a dog, חתולה (female) for a cat. Similarly, "he" for horse, "she" for goat, sheep, cow (males of the latter three has specific names which are less frequently used).

I saw in another post http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1230361 that dog-cat genders are the same with Arabic.

Is there anything similar in other languages, IE or other? Specifically, is it just modern talking or deep in the history of languages.


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## Jcpas

I'm not sure of your question.  Many languages have gender classifications for nouns.  IE languages in particular.  English has lost gender for inanimate nouns, and other languages like Norwegian are kind of losing them (they're more flexible, and there is a common and neuter gender, instead of masculine, feminine, neuter).  

The gender assigned to the word is generally related to the sound of the word and not the meaning.  Many people make mistakes on this.  In German, a girl is NEUTER because it's das MaedCHEN.  That ending on the word makes it neuter, not the meaning.  

Some languages use other classifications instead of gender (some Austronesian languages classify based on edibility).  Some, like Finnish, have none at all, not even a different word for he/she.  

If you asking specifically if the animal genders remain the same across languages, the short answer is no.  French (as one example): chien (dog M)  chat (cat M)  cheval (horse M) chevre (goat F) mouton (sheep M) vache (cow F).


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## origumi

Jcpas said:


> I'm not sure of your question.


 
The issue I'm talking about is assigning a "default gender" to animals. for example, assuming that a dog is a male and a cat is a female. A dog and a cat have masculine & feminine forms in (some of the?) languages that have genders, yet a specific gender is assumed.


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## sokol

I am not quite sure what your original question was.
In German, as in French, the dog is male, while in German a cat is female but in French male: this however are grammatical genders.

If I see a cat in the street - and refer to it as "die Katze" (female) - I don't necessarily think: "oh look, there's a she-cat!". On the contrary, I would only think "cat" - but nevertheless apply female gender.
And I am quite sure that the same is true for French or other European languages with natural gender.

Sure, we are aware of the fact that there's grammatical gender and that it is male, female (and neuter, in some languages). But we don't attribute natural gender with that - except if we _want _to express natural gender.
English is different as it has no grammatical gender but natural gender (see for example this threads here and here).

I don't speak Hebrew and Arab so I can only guess if this is similar for you, or if it isn't.

So, did you mean what I did describe above, or did you just mean grammatical gender as such?


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## Jcpas

Quite right sokol.  Like I said origumi, there is nothing inherently masculine about a dog, and nothing inherently feminine about a cat, it's just grammatical convention in your language.  It is usually based on the sounds associated with a word that give it its classification, NOT the meaning of the word (except frequently in cases referring to people where the gender is obvious, e.g. mother, father, brother, sister, etc)


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## origumi

sokol said:


> I am not quite sure what your original question was
> ...
> So, did you mean what I did describe above, or did you just mean grammatical gender as such?


 
It's not an issue of grammatical gender, but of preference. In Hebrew and Arabic the are male dog, female dog, male cat, female cat, male horse, female horse, etc. We have freedom of choice and yet the language prefers the masculine for some animals, feminine for other.

(By the way, the difficulty to explain what I mean shows how much our thinking is effected by language capabilities. Speakers of language with no gender system or with one specific gender for each animal may consider my question as wierd).


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## Jcpas

That is perhaps then the cultural perception of these animals.  There is also a strong tie in English when it comes to cats embodying female qualities.  This preference is strictly cultural though.  

Besides, sometimes the default words don't match gender.  In English, we use the word "actor" to refer to anyone playing a role in a piece.  It is only when we are referring to someone specific that we may switch to "actress."  Actress has a gender restriction attached to its meaning.  In the same way, perhaps referring to a male cat in Hebrew is simply not the "default" (which is cultural).  

Another example... I believe English "cat" was also originally feminine, which is why we have the word tomcat to refer to a male.  For a dog, which is originally masculine, we have the more specific word "bitch" referring to a female.  The default gender of these were different.


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## sokol

origumi said:


> It's not an issue of grammatical gender, but of preference. In Hebrew and Arabic the are male dog, female dog, male cat, female cat, male horse, female horse, etc. We have freedom of choice and yet the language prefers the masculine for some animals, feminine for other.



Ah - I see, so this then really is a different question.

In Indoeuropean languages in general grammatical gender is fixed (except for those who've lost it, like English): a cat *has *to be male in French and female in German (= grammatical gender) if you refer to an ordinary cat in the street and if you don't mean to identify the gender of the cat you refer to.
Of course French and German also have male/female forms (French male: _matou _and female _chatte_, German male:_ Kater)_ - but if you use either of them it is clear that you are referring to a male or female cat.

In Hebrew, then, if I understand this correctly, you usually use with dogs the "he-dog" word and with cats the "she-cat" word - and now it gets difficult:
(1) *without meaning to say *that you think this is a "he-dog" or a "she-cat" but using those words as a hypernym which could mean either, but that _you may also use_ "she-dog" or "he-cat" in the exact same meaning (that is, not necessarily meaning natural gender) which however would be unusual (if I wouldn't add the latter as an option it would be the same as with German or French); *or:*
(2) *with conventionally thinking* of dogs as being "he-dogs" and cats being "she-cats" despite the fact that everyone would know you don't talk about "he-dogs" or "she-cats" in particular but more general about dogs and cats. And in this case I think the term for "she-dog" and "he-cat" would have to mean that you are talking about natural gender.

What European languages do is basically (1) but without the option of using the other term in the same meaning: either _matou/chatte_ or _Kater_ *always *will refer to only males/females (French) or males (German).

Please confirm what we're talking about. 



Jcpas said:


> Another example... I believe English "cat" was also originally feminine, which is why we have the word tomcat to refer to a male. For a dog, which is originally masculine, we have the more specific word "bitch" referring to a female. The default gender of these were different.


Yes, that was of course the case - English only lost grammatical gender, it kept however the special words for the alternate sex; _except _that English "cat" should go back to Latin "cattus" which is male (as well as related Italian gatto and French chat). (Also see this thread about "cat", this feline pet is much too important to be treated with in a sidenote of any thread. )
But probably a reminiscence of Germanic (female) "Katze" still was enough for English "cat" so that it was, technically, interpreted as a female form, which could be the source for "tomcat".
See also French (which might have had an influence here), also strangely with "chatte" for the female (and neutral "chat" = male in grammatical gender) while there's the special word "matou" for a male cat: French is one of the Romance languages with quite some Germanic influence, and Norman French had an impact on English.


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## Outsider

origumi said:


> It's not an issue of grammatical gender, but of preference. In Hebrew and Arabic the are male dog, female dog, male cat, female cat, male horse, female horse, etc. We have freedom of choice and yet the language prefers the masculine for some animals, feminine for other.


English seems to have the same thing:

dog = male, cat = female

This is not the case in Portuguese. There is grammatical gender, but it's understood as a language convention, not an assumption about the sex of the animal, as Sokol explained above.


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## cajzl

In the Czech fables and fairy tales the dogs and wolves are always male and the cats and foxen are female.

There is even a story about a dog and a cat (_O pejskovi a kočičce_). They live together as a couple. Little children usually believe that the cat is a wife of the dog. Although it is not expressed explicitly in the story.


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## Maroseika

In Russian though there are different words for males and females of many animals, each of them has a common name used in the first turn to specify an animal when you don't care its gender.
Thus, fox, cat, dog, duck, horse, cow, goat, hog is "she"; wolf, donkey, goose, pig (young hog) is "he".


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## sokol

Well, Slavic languages also fall in the same category as French and German: grammatical gender, and one of the terms (either one with male or one with female grammatical gender) is used for general reference to an animal.

As is the case with Russian _кошка - cat, собака - dog_ (both female), and Czech _kočka - cat _(female), _pes - dog_ (male), Slovene _mačka - cat _(female), _pes - dog_ (male).

I'm only a little bit puzzled concerning Russian (alternative?) пëс - dog (male): this = _pes _is the correct hypernym for _dog _in Slovenian while in Russian you have _both _a male and a female word for _dog _which _might _be hypernyms - my dictionary however suggests that _собака_ were the most usual hypernym (and probably you always mean a male cat when you use _пëс? _- it would be great if you could clarify this.)

Of course in fairy tales those "typical" grammatical genders many times are "turned around": in German *Puss in Boots*)* is *Der gestiefelte Kater* (male form used!)
*) The English choice is a little bit unusual here: even though there's no grammatical gender a "puss" usually is associated with females. But fairy tales are different anyway. 


But whatever, I'd say that Slavic languages fit in quite well with the (Indo)European style of using grammatical gender.
While Hebrew seems not to.


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## Kanes

In Bulgarian there are masculine and feminen words for every animal. Its corect to use both and you have to if you know the natural gender, but when you see an animal if you cant make out the gender we tend to use comonly prefered one. I think it stems from the social idea of the animal. For example we tend to use feminen for animals you milk... masculine for ones that do work or were used in war. In this case its not only gramatical gender as the faminen and masculine use their corect gramatical genders.

prefered masculine: dog(kuche), horse(kon), rabit(zaek), valk(wolf), 

prefered feminen: cat(kotka), sheep(ovca), goat(koza), cow(krava)


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## elirlandes

Outsider said:


> English seems to have the same thing:
> dog = male, cat = female



NB: My post refers to the sex of the animal, and not grammatical gender.

Dog refers to the male of the canine species.
Cat is a catch all for the feline species... Male = Tomcat, Female = tabby

When looking at cattle, in english most people would say look at the cows (the female of the species) without checking to see if they are bulls (male).


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## Kevin Beach

I think I understand origumi's original question. It refers to what is effectively the anthropomorphising of animals, i.e. our tendency to attribute some human qualities to them and then talk to and about them accordingly. We adopt received assumptions about their sexual gender; it isn't about their grammatical gender.

In my experience, in Britain we too tend to think of dogs as male and cats as female. It isn't invariable, but it's very common.


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## dinji

In Swedish feminine and masculine grammatical gender is about to merge. Only dialects uphold a grammatical gender distinction between masculine and feminine. The personal pronouns also make the distinction. 

The standard words for dog (hund) and cat (katt) were both originally grammatically masculine. Yet I think there still is a tendency to perceive by default of a cat as feminine. I think of the expression "sjas katta" with which you command a cat to go away, where a obviously feminine derivative is used. Tomcats are also commonly refered to by other words such as _hankatt_ 'he cat' or _frasse_ (dial.). A female dog is also a dog in generic terms, but the tendency to use the gender specific word _tik_ is strong, unlike for he-dogs.

The generic word for horse -_häst_- is gender neutral (although historically grammatical masculine) with special words for both genders complementing it: _hingst_ (uncastrated) masc. and _sto_ fem.


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## Outsider

elirlandes said:


> Outsider said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> English seems to have the same thing:
> dog = male, cat = female
> 
> 
> 
> NB: My post refers to the sex of the animal, and not grammatical gender.
> 
> Dog refers to the male of the canine species.
> Cat is a catch all for the feline species... Male = Tomcat, Female = tabby
> 
> When looking at cattle, in english most people would say look at the cows (the female of the species) without checking to see if they are bulls (male).
Click to expand...

Then please explain the remarks in this thread.


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## sokol

Outsider said:


> Then please explain the remarks in this thread.


Interesting thread, especially as in one opened years later by me (referred to already above - this one), native speakers convinced me that no such thing as a "conventional gender" (some kind of grammatical gender) exists in English: and I even mentioned in my very first post there that "... _cats _seem to be more likely female but _dogs _more likely male ...".


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## dudasd

If I understood the issue of this thread well - that the question is: do our brains link grammatical gender with the presumed gender of an animal - I'd say: very likely. In Serbian we have both male and female forms for almost all the animals, and seeng an animal where we can easily distinct its sex, we will use the appropriate gender as well, so of course that _bik_ (bull) will never be _krava_ (cow). But when it comes to those animals where we can't recognize their sex immediately and from afar (like dogs and cats), then most of people will think about a dog as "he" (pas), and about a cat as "she" (mačka). Generally speaking, we tend to use feminine forms for small and usually slim animals (lisica (fox), lasica (weasel), kuna (marten) etc.) and masculine forms for big animals (like medved (bear)), though it's not a rule; for example, rat and mouse (pacov and miš) are masculine, and we will always suppose that it's "he" again.


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## sokol

Yes, dudasd, I understood it just like you did (I am still not sure though if this is what the OP meant).
Interesting to hear that you, for Serbian, feel that you attribute a "he-ness" or "she-ness" to an animal of which you don't know the gender, which will be prompted by the grammatical gender which applies for the neutral word for this animal.

In Hebrew anyway, and Arabic it seems, as far as I have understood this, there seem to be possibilities (both male and female grammatical gender), that is you probably can use _either male or female _for an animal of which you don't know the natural gender (so, generalised use for both genders), and that you use _mostly male for dogs_ or _mostly female for cats_ only by convention.

Or something along these lines. (I am sorry but I am still not sure about this at all, hopefully someone can answer this. )


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## dinji

sokol said:


> In Hebrew anyway, and Arabic it seems, as far as I have understood this, there seem to be possibilities (both male and female grammatical gender), that is you probably can use _either male or female _for an animal of which you don't know the natural gender (so, generalised use for both genders), and that you use _mostly male for dogs_ or _mostly female for cats_ only by convention.
> 
> Or something along these lines. (I am sorry but I am still not sure about this at all, hopefully someone can answer this. )


At least the grammatically feminine _*kalbá*_ 'bitch' could never refer to a male dog in Hebrew. By analogy I doubt very much that _*hatúl*_ '[grammatically masculine] cat' could refer tu a female cat. This was the point made by Origumi in the first place: that the thing just works one way, and strangely enough in opposite ways for different species.


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## dinji

sokol said:


> Yes, dudasd, I understood it just like you did (I am still not sure though if this is what the OP meant).
> Interesting to hear that you, for Serbian, feel that you attribute a "he-ness" or "she-ness" to an animal of which you don't know the gender, which will be prompted by the grammatical gender which applies for the neutral word for this animal.


I wonder if anybody native in Icelandic could clarify the status there. We have the historicaly generic word for cat: _*köttur*_, which is grammatically masculine. Then there is a younger word for a specifically female cat, *kisa*. Now may _*köttur*_ (m.) nevertheless function as a generic description of the species, if one is ignorant of the the sex and the cat may therefore be female?


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## Maroseika

sokol said:


> I'm only a little bit puzzled concerning Russian (alternative?) пëс - dog (male): this = _pes _is the correct hypernym for _dog _in Slovenian while in Russian you have _both _a male and a female word for _dog _which _might _be hypernyms - my dictionary however suggests that _собака_ were the most usual hypernym (and probably you always mean a male cat (dog?) when you use _пëс? _- it would be great if you could clarify this.)


Though пес in Russian is musc., it can be applied to the female dog as well, if one doesn't care the sex of the animal (also песик, псина, псинка). However собака is much more common, this becomes evident when turning to the collective names: собаки (not псы), собаководство (dog-breeding); and also: кошки (not коты), овцеводство (sheep breeding), куроводство (hen-breeding), etc.
For exact dogs definition there are other words: кобель and сука, which can be applied only to the correct sex.


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## sokol

Maroseika said:


> Though пес in Russian is musc., it can be applied to the female dog as well, if one doesn't care the sex of the animal (also песик, псина, псинка). However собака is much more common (...)


Now this is interesting because this could be one of those (it seems) very rare cases where both a male and a female noun could be used in the generic sense, without necessarily referring to a particular gender - _пес _and _собака_.

I suspect that _пес _might be a Church Slavonic loan in Russian - what do you think? And is there probably a difference in style (probably poetic style = _пес _or something like that)?


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## Maroseika

sokol said:


> Now this is interesting because this could be one of those (it seems) very rare cases where both a male and a female noun could be used in the generic sense, without necessarily referring to a particular gender - _пес _and _собака_.


I did not mean пес can be used as a generic word as it is: one would rather call a stranger dog собака than пес, or better say пес in this case would express special attitude, a kind of warmness. But in the derivative names both stems are used as generic names without any visible system: 

собаководство
собачьи бега (dog race)
собачья жизнь (really bad life)
собачья акула (sea dog)
холод собачий 

but:
псовая охота (hunting with hounds)
Большой и Малый Пес (constellations)
псинка (nightshade - called for its toxity) 
густопсовая порода (a breed with thick hair) 
and even псовая собака (greyhound). 
However last 2 terms are motivated with псовина - thick dog hair, and this is rather funnily, for according to one of the etymological versions пес originates from the IE stem meaning "fur".






> I suspect that _пес _might be a Church Slavonic loan in Russian - what do you think?


No need to turn to Church Slavonic, because this word existed in Ancient Russian and Old Slavonic(пьсь).




> And is there probably a difference in style (probably poetic style = _пес _or something like that)?


In modern language i don't see any difference in styles, just собака being much more common.


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## Miguel Antonio

origumi said:


> In my native language some animals has a "default gender". A dog would usually be "he", a cat "she".
> Is there anything similar in other languages, IE or other?


In Spanish, may I cite the following:
(male/female)
_caballo/yegua
toro/vaca
carnero/oveja
gallo/gallina

cerdo/cerda
perro/perra
gato/gata

_But the following examples are single words for both the sexes:
_una rana _(f) is a frog,
_un sapo_ (m) is a toad
_una serpiente _(f) is a snake 
_un ratón _(m)is a mouse
_una rata _(f) is a rat

_una rana macho _or _un macho de rana_ -would be the way to specify the actual sex of a given individual.

Etc.


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## Forero

Wouldn't a fox be _una zorra_ and a dog be _un perro_ unless we know it to be of the opposite sex?

Speaking of _macho de rana_,_ hembra del sapo_, I suppose we assume a bullfrog to be male unless we know it is a female bullfrog.

Besides the overall tendency to call a dog "he" and a cat "she" unless we know otherwise, I have noticed that children with a female family dog tend to call all dogs "she" unless we tell them otherwise.  The same, _mutatis mutandis_ goes for families with male cats.


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## Miguel Antonio

Forero said:


> Wouldn't a fox be _una zorra_ and a dog be _un perro_ unless we know it to be of the opposite sex?


Most people I know tend to say _perro _and _gato _until they find out otherwise. As to the fox, as far as I know, in Spain the feminine form is normally used as a synonym for *slut*, nothing to do with the animal. In Galician language it is the case that you state, a fox will normally, by default, be called _a raposa_, in the feminine form, even though the masculine also exists. A mole is _a toupeira_, and I have never heard it in the masculine form. An otter is _a lontra_, similar to the Spanish _la nutria_, and I have never heard any masculine form for either of these (_lontro, nutrio_ ).
So, if I have understood the original question correctly, the answer for Spanish and Galician is yes, in two categories:
- For most animals having the same form with different endings for male and female, the general trend is to go for the masculine first, with some exceptions.
- There are animals with a single form for both sexes, sometimes the masculine, sometimes the feminine.

Cheers

MA


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## jana.bo99

I don't see here Croatian: 

he - dog (male):    on - pas

she - cat (female): ona - mačka

he - cat (male):     on - mačak

jana.bo


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## Outsider

Forero said:


> Wouldn't a fox be _una zorra_ and a dog be _un perro_ unless we know it to be of the opposite sex?


Yes, but a Spanish speaker would not assume that _un perro_ is necessarily male, or that all _zorras_ are actually female. I don't think there any cultural convention of foxes being female and dogs being male.


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