# about gender



## Micia93

Hello to all 

you may find this question silly, but I've always wondered how you, non native, could have the *notion* of gender, since you have none in english.
Of course, you  learn it as is when learning french, but can you *feel *it ? is it logical or totally obscure and unclear for you ?
I admit this is a strange question !


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## wildeline

Question intéressante Micia 

J'ai toujours eu le problème avec les mots neutres en allemand, les féminins et masculins aussi d'ailleurs. 
Personnellement je ne "ressentais" rien, il fallait apprendre, apprendre et encore apprendre.


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## b1947420

Micia93 said:


> Hello to all
> 
> you may find this question silly, but I've always wondered how you, non native, could have the *notion* of gender, since you have none in english.
> Of course, you learn it as is when learning french, but can you *feel *it ? is it logical or totally obscure and unclear for you ?
> I admit this is a strange question !


 
As a student of French I can tell you that your question is not strange at all.
It is very difficult to know without constant useage of the language in order to become familiar with which article to use. Although there are rules they are not always true for all situations.
So no it is not always logical nor clear.


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## Micia93

wildeline said:


> Question intéressante Micia
> 
> J'ai toujours eu le problème avec les mots neutres en allemand, les féminins et masculins aussi d'ailleurs.
> Personnellement je ne "ressentais" rien, il fallait apprendre, apprendre et encore apprendre.


 
c'est vrai, tu as raison, j'ai aussi appris l'allemand et j'apprenais bêtement les genres qui ne correspondaient pas aux nôtres bien souvent ! quant au neutre ... 
ceci dit, nous français avons quand même la notion de ce que peut être un genre, donc ce concept ne nous perturbe pas, si tu vois ce que je veux dire


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## Micia93

b1947420 said:


> As a student of French I can tell you that your question is not strange at all.
> It is very difficult to know without constant useage of the language in order to become familiar with which article to use. Although there are rules they are not always true for all situations.
> So no it is not always logical nor clear.


 
I was asking more about the *concept* itself than the articles which are obviously linked
in fact, I wonder if this "philosophical" question should be in this forum


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## b1947420

Micia93 said:


> I was asking more about the *concept* itself than the articles which are obviously linked
> in fact, I wonder if this "philosophical" question should be in this forum


 
No! I don't understand the concept.
Can you enlighten me?


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## Micia93

b1947420 said:


> No! I don't understand the concept.
> Can you enlighten me?


 
for instance, the notions of "feminine" and "masculine" are totally nonsense for you ; it's the same with blind people, they have no notions of how the world looks like, apart from touching it.
sorry for this poor comparison but that's just to explain what I meant 
however, I admit that knowing that "table" "armoire" "chaise" ... have the same gender as women doesn't bring a lot ! 
what's funny is that derogatory words are often feminine in french, I have no examples in mind for the moment, but I'll find ...


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## Gramsci

Actually, I think it's a great question, and I think it's sort of entertaining that it's posed by a native French speaker.

As an anglophone that has really only studied French as an adult - though for the past 15 years now but part time and not via a true immersion - absorbing the concept that every noun has a gender, and also that this gender needs to be reflected in the adjectives and other words that attach to it, is an enormous challenge, and I would add a frustrating one.  It is frustrating particularly because, at least for anglophones, it appears utterly superfluous, adding nothing, but making language learning far more difficult.  (I realize that for native French speakers, the gender of nouns may offer additional "colour" to the language, and perhaps be a source of some aesthetic, or even beauty - but if so, appreciating such is only something that the most advanced second language learners would achieve; for the rest of us, it's simply something difficult to learn).

More simply, I would try to answer it this way.  Imagine if a language community were to be "discovered", and it were found that in that language, every noun was deemed to be either "red" or "blue", and this noun colour was reflected in the spelling, pronunciation, verb conjugations, accord with adjectives, etc.  With such a language, would those of us learning it grasp the concept of noun colour?

Merçi pour la question intéressante - you're right, it probably doesn't belong in this forum - but it was too tempting to let it pass!


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## Micia93

Gramsci said:


> Actually, I think it's a great question, and I think it's sort of entertaining that it's posed by a native French speaker.
> 
> As an anglophone that has really only studied French as an adult - though for the past 15 years now but part time and not via a true immersion - absorbing the concept that every noun has a gender, and also that this gender needs to be reflected in the adjectives and other words that attach to it, is an enormous challenge, and I would add a *frustrating* one. It is frustrating particularly because, at least for anglophones, it appears utterly *superfluous, adding nothing,* but making language learning far more difficult. (I realize that for native French speakers, the gender of nouns may offer additional "colour" to the language, and perhaps be a source of some aesthetic, or even beauty - but if so, appreciating such is only something that the most advanced second language learners would achieve; for the rest of us, it's simply something difficult to learn).
> 
> More simply, I would try to answer it this way. Imagine if a language community were to be "discovered", and it were found that in that language, every noun was deemed to be either "red" or "blue", and this noun colour was reflected in the spelling, pronunciation, verb conjugations, accord with adjectives, etc. With such a language, *would* *those of us learning it grasp the concept of noun colour*?
> 
> Merçi pour la question intéressante - you're right, it probably doesn't belong in this forum - but it was too tempting to let it pass!


 
what a smart answer Gramsci ! 
I put in bold what actually answered to my question
as for the "entertaining" side of my question, I agree with you


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## JiPiJou

To _*Gramsci*_ :

*Voyelles*

A *noir*, E *blanc*, I *rouge*, U *vert*, O *bleu *: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes :
*A*, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d'ombre ; *E*, candeur des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d'ombelles ;
*I*, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes ;

*U*, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides
Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux ;

*O*, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silence traversés des Mondes et des Anges :
- *O* l'Oméga, rayon *violet *de Ses Yeux ! -

Arthur Rimbaud


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## Micia93

yes, great imagination, but unfortunatly provoked by some drugs ...


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## itka

Micia, il y a des langues (comme le chinois) où les noms appartiennent à des classes, sans qu'il y ait pour cela la moindre justification ou le moindre repère... Il faut les apprendre.
Qu'est-ce que cela pourrait bien représenter pour nous, sinon une difficulté supplémentaire et inutile ?

Personnellement, le fait qu'il existe un neutre en allemand ne m'inspire strictement rien. Les mots "neutres" n'ont aucune "coloration" différente des autres...

_Je me demande si ce fil ne serait pas mieux à sa place dans les "cultural discussions" ?_


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## custard apple

I love your "entertaining" question.  When I guess the gender in either French or Italian usually I am only 70% correct.
Wildeside: are you saying that you a native French speaker also have problems with gender ????!!!! How interesting, did I misinterpret you ?


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## Pedro y La Torre

Micia93 said:


> you may find this question silly, but I've always wondered how you, non native, could have the *notion* of gender, since you have none in english.
> Of course, you  learn it as is when learning french, but can you *feel *it ? is it logical or totally obscure and unclear for you ?



It's not illogical at all, even if it's not natural for me, I can understand the reasoning behind one noun taking a feminine marker and another masculine - even if sometimes I mix them up.

I do however struggle with rulings such as this one 



			
				L'académie française said:
			
		

> Le 21 mars 2002, l’Académie française publie une nouvelle déclaration pour rappeler sa position à ce sujet et, en particulier, le contresens linguistique sur lequel repose l’entreprise d’une féminisation systématique. Si, en effet, le français connaît deux genres, appelés _masculin _et _féminin,_ il serait plus juste de les nommer *genre  marqué *et *genre*_ *non marqué*._ Seul le genre masculin, non marqué, peut représenter aussi bien les éléments masculins que féminins. En effet, le genre féminin ou marqué est privatif : un « groupe d’étudiantes » ne pourra contenir d’élèves de sexe masculin, tandis qu’un « groupe d’étudiants » pourra contenir des élèves des deux sexes, indifféremment. On se gardera également de dire _les électeurs et les électrices, les  informaticiennes et les informaticiens,_ expressions qui sont non seulement lourdes  mais aussi redondantes_, les informaticiennes_ étant comprises dans _les  informaticiens. _De la même  manière, l’usage du symbole « / » ou des parenthèses pour indiquer  les formes masculine et féminine (_Les électeurs/électrices du boulevard  Voltaire sont appelé(e)s à voter dans le bureau 14_) doit être proscrit dans la mesure où il contrevient à la règle traditionnelle de l’accord au pluriel. C’est donc le féminin qui est le genre de la discrimination, et non, comme on peut parfois l’entendre, le genre masculin.


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## Micia93

custard apple said:


> I love your "entertaining" question. When I guess the gender in either French or Italian usually I am only 70% correct.
> Wildeside: are you saying that you a native French speaker also have problems with gender ????!!!! How interesting, did I misinterpret you ?


 
no, I have no problem at all with genders Custard Apple ! 
it's just that it's always interesting to try and understand others' points of view, something like empathy in a way ...


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## Micia93

itka said:


> _Je me demande si ce fil ne serait pas mieux à sa place dans les "cultural discussions" ?_


 
tu as tout-à-fait raison Itka, d'où, mon doute depuis le départ sur la pertinence de cette question sur ce forum 
ceci dit, je ne connaissais pas du tout le forum "cultural discussions", merci du tuyau !


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## Sepia

Micia93 said:


> Hello to all
> 
> you may find this question silly, but I've always wondered how you, non native, could have the *notion* of gender, since you have none in english.
> Of course, you learn it as is when learning french, but can you *feel *it ? is it logical or totally obscure and unclear for you ?
> I admit this is a strange question !


 
I understand what you mean - and the concept itself may seem obscure even to someone with a native language with different gender system - because when you are a small child and learn to speak, you just use them and don't think of then grammatical genders.

However, that is not the only concept that may seem obscure until you just accept them as facts: The various past tenses ... future tense ... 

I can assure you that lots of Scandinavians and Germans wonder that they need one more for.


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## Nunty

I grew up speaking two languages, one with gender and the other without. As far as I can recall, I never had interference or feelings of puzzlement while speaking either one. 

On the other hand, I have learned "gendered" languages later in life and it drives me absolutely nuts when the gender of a substantive is different in each of them. For example, it is clear to me that a table שולחן is masculine. Clear and obvious. It feels bizarre to me to say "la table" in French, as though I were using "she" to refer to a male.


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## Micia93

Nunty said:


> I grew up speaking two languages, one with gender and the other without. As far as I can recall, I never had interference or feelings of puzzlement while speaking either one.
> 
> On the other hand, I have learned "gendered" languages later in life and it drives me absolutely nuts when the gender of a substantive is different in each of them. For example, it is clear to me that a table שולחן is masculine. Clear and obvious. It feels bizarre to me to say "la table" in French, as though I were using "she" to refer to a male.


 
you mean you have spoken english and hebrew at the same time ? (presuming english would be the unique language without gender !) so you had this notion of gender when growing up, which explains you never had been disturbed
on the other hand, I agree with you : having studied german language confuses me, since the genders are not the same !


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## jinti

I remember beginning Spanish and Italian classes as a teenager.  The teacher would introduce the idea that everything had a gender, the class would giggle (no doubt imagining common household objects with, ahem, masculine and feminine body parts), someone would ask why, the teacher would shrug and say that's just how it is....  No rhyme or reason, just memorize it.  After all, it's arbitrary.

It seemed very odd to refer to a table as _she _instead of _it _-- we kept hoping for the surprise appearance of an inanimate pronoun that would let us avoid what seemed like very weird constructions to us.  ("Seriously?  'There is a table?  Put the book on _her_?'  You gotta be kidding!  Do they really talk like that???")

And then the idea that adjectives and articles had to agree in gender and number with their nouns seemed a bit redundant: _I have a_-masculine-singular _red_-masculine-singular _book_-masculine-singular.  So we asked the teacher why we couldn't just say the masculine-singular stuff once and be done with it -- does the listener really have such a bad memory that he has to be told 3 times in a row like that?  And then the teacher shrugged and said that's just how it is....

Other questions come up, too.  For instance, my mother asked me once whether men tended to avoid feminine nouns in speech -- she had always wondered.

Of course, every language has its arbitrary features.  Native speakers internalize them until they seem almost instinctive, non-natives struggle to memorize them and develop that elusive "feel" for them, and language teachers are happy because they have jobs. ;-)


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## Micia93

what a bad teacher you had !  

I don't understand the "feminine nouns avoided in speeches" bit
can you give an example ?


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## Sepia

jinti said:


> I remember beginning Spanish and Italian classes as a teenager. The teacher would introduce the idea that everything had a gender, the class would giggle (no doubt imagining common household objects with, ahem, masculine and feminine body parts), someone would ask why, the teacher would shrug and say that's just how it is.... No rhyme or reason, just memorize it. After all, it's arbitrary.
> 
> It seemed very odd to refer to a table as _she _instead of _it _-- we kept hoping for the surprise appearance of an inanimate pronoun that would let us avoid what seemed like very weird constructions to us. ("Seriously? 'There is a table? Put the book on _her_?' You gotta be kidding! Do they really talk like that???")
> 
> And then the idea that adjectives and articles had to agree in gender and number with their nouns seemed a bit redundant: _I have a_-masculine-singular _red_-masculine-singular _book_-masculine-singular. So we asked the teacher why we couldn't just say the masculine-singular stuff once and be done with it -- does the listener really have such a bad memory that he has to be told 3 times in a row like that? And then the teacher shrugged and said that's just how it is....
> 
> Other questions come up, too. For instance, my mother asked me once whether men tended to avoid feminine nouns in speech -- she had always wondered.
> 
> Of course, every language has its arbitrary features. Native speakers internalize them until they seem almost instinctive, non-natives struggle to memorize them and develop that elusive "feel" for them, and language teachers are happy because they have jobs. ;-)


 

I wouldn't say that your teacher is stupid, but I'd go as far as to claim that he really did not care to take a deeper look into things and ask the question "why", himself. 

Redundand is one thing which you can call it - but you could say that about rhyming too. I don't think anyone can tell for sure how this evolved, but one possibility is that this "system" once was a more or less a phonetic thing. It systematized itself bit by bit and eventually some linguist named them genders - M, F, and N - and thus some genderless object that happened to have the same class of article as females would grammatically be classified as F. 

And it goes even further - in German certain suffixes demand certain grammatical genders, regardless of the phyical gender. The German word for "girl" - obviously female - is "Mädchen". The original word for "girl" got lost in history somewhere and this word is actually a diminutive, recognizable by the ending "-chen". Thus it must be N. This is definitely a problem to a lot of people of mother languages that have genders - Scandinavians often find it hard to get used to saying "it" about a female person. Doesn't seem right, does it?


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## Mate

*Moderator note*: 

From the Cultural Discussions Guidelines:

The purpose of this forum is to help participants and other readers learn about cross-cultural aspects of different countries and groups of people. It is neither a chat board, nor a place to advocate or promote personal viewpoints about _the way things ought to be_; rather, it seeks to help us learn how things are, and how they are changing over time, *and not what I think of things and how I would like them to go*.

Thanks.


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## Novanas

Actually English, in the old days, had grammatical gender--masculine, feminine and neuter, just like German still has, which is not surprising since English is a Germanic language.

I have seen a (French) linguist blame French for the loss of gender in English: after William of Normandy invaded and conquered England in 1066, French became the language of the upper classes, while English remained the language of the lower classes.  And since (according to this linguist) the common people are not so conservative in matters of language, English began to undergo some wide-ranging changes.

The term "gender" is misleading, though.  It would be better, I think, to talk about noun "classes", which is what they are called in Swahili, which, if I remember correctly has seven different noun classes.

But this sort of question can be turned around.  E.g., in English we have habitual and continuous verb tenses to differentiate between habitual actions and actions in progress.  Many other languages lack this distinction.  So we English-speakers could ask the question: do you not feel the difference between a habitual action and an action in progress?

I don't mean to get off-topic, though.  I do know from my study of Latin that noun gender can cause problems.  For example, if you have three nouns, one masculine, one feminine and one neuter, what gender should an adjective be that modifies all three of them?  A language sometimes can be overly precise, and Latin often has this problem.


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## Hulalessar

Seneca the Duck said:


> I do know from my study of Latin that noun gender can cause problems. For example,if you have three nouns, one masculine, one feminine and one neuter, what gender should an adjective be that modifies all three of them? A language sometimes can be overly precise, and Latin often has this problem.


 
Maculine covers feminine and neuter, and feminine covers neuter.

No languages are over precise - they just differ in the areas where more precision is required compared to another language. As you have pointed out, English makes a distinction between progressive and habitual forms of the verb which many languages do not.


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## Novanas

I don't pretend to be the greatest expert in Latin, but it is not true to say that masculine covers feminine and neuter, while feminine covers neuter.

In a case where an adjective modifies two or more nouns of different genders, Latin has a choice of putting the adjective in the neuter plural or making it agree with the last noun mentioned.  It has been my observation that generally it chooses to make the adjective agree with the last noun mentioned.

I would agree with you that I shouldn't have used the term "overly precise".  What I mean to say is that when a language creates precision, it sometimes also creates problems.

Gender of nouns can be very handy.  For example, French, by using expressions such as "celle-ci" or "celui-là" can refer to nouns much less awkwardly than English.  English is often forced to rely on such expressions as "the former" or "the latter", which are usually very clumsy, if it is not required to repeat the noun to avoid confusion.

But gender of nouns can also raise problems, such as the one I mentioned in the case of Latin.

One reason I have always enjoyed studying languages is this:  we see things in the world and we want to express them.  Different languages find different solutions to the problem of putting into words the things that we observe.

A lack of noun gender in English seldom bothers me.  But French lacks continuous tenses, and yet the French get along perfectly well without them.  I know that when I first started studying French this lack bothered me greatly.  But as I got to know the language better, I got used to it.  French has no problem expressing continuous actions.  It just finds a different solution than English does.


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## acemach

Salut à tous!

The only gendered language I know is French. I have been learning it for just under 2 years. Since my contact with it is mostly written, the only 'feel' I have ever developed is due to noun endings. It just feels weird to say la -ment, or le -tion, though I'm terrible with the exceptions. I stopped thinking of them as male or female a while ago. Just 2 ways of saying 'the' that somehow depended on the endings. =]

Ace


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## Novanas

I've been doing French for about 40 years now, and I still don't have any "feel" for gender.  I think that's something that you either grow up with or you don't.  With practice you make fewer mistakes, but I don't know that you ever get a feel for it.  Maybe other people's experience is different from mine.


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## Pedro y La Torre

I'm no fan of the Académie Française but they do state that one should avoid the terms masculine and feminine and instead use "_genre marqué et genre non marqué_" which, from a rational standpoint, makes much more sense to me.


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## MiriamE

jinti said:


> Other questions come up, too. For instance, my mother asked me once whether men tended to avoid feminine nouns in speech -- she had always wondered.


 That could be a whole new thread.  Do men and women use a different vocabulary?


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## eafkuor

acemach said:


> Salut à tous!
> 
> *The only gendered language I know is French.* I have been learning it for just under 2 years. Since my contact with it is mostly written, the only 'feel' I have ever developed is due to noun endings. It just feels weird to say la -ment, or le -tion, though I'm terrible with the exceptions. I stopped thinking of them as male or female a while ago. Just 2 ways of saying 'the' that somehow depended on the endings. =]
> 
> Ace


Another one is Italian, and the strange thing is that is difficult for me to thing about objects without thinking of their gender, even when I speak english.


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## kirsitn

itka said:


> Micia, il y a des langues (comme le chinois) où les noms appartiennent à des classes, sans qu'il y ait pour cela la moindre justification ou le moindre repère... Il faut les apprendre.
> Qu'est-ce que cela pourrait bien représenter pour nous, sinon une difficulté supplémentaire et inutile ?



I don't know how the usage of word classes/measure words in Chinese started, but I think there's a simple reason why it hasn't disappeared. Chinese (mandarin) has a large number of homophones, and thus the measure words help to keep the spoken language understandable and less ambiguous than it would be without the measure words. The measure words are often related to some physical characteristic of the word they belong to, for instance "long, thin things" (snake, pants, tie) or "flat things" (paper, table), so although they are a pain to learn, they are not entirely random.


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