# Feminines with numbers



## Welsh_Sion

My language, Cymraeg/Welsh, has two genders, masc. and fem. Like many gender-based languages, it doesn't necessarily follow that a female person will have a corresponding job title using a feminine noun. When they don't, the old grammatical joke of 'man embraces woman', applies.

For example,

*athro *(masc.), *athrawes* (fem.) = male and female teacher, respectively
*Athro *(masc.) = male *or* female (university) professor.

Similarly, *gweinidog* (masc.) applies to both a male and a female minister (political or religious).

As certain numbers (1, 2, 3, 4 and their compounds) also have masculine and feminine forms, these will agree with the *gender of the noun and not that of the actual person, with, in cases of mixed individuals default to masculine*.

(In the following examples, unless you know Welsh grammar, please don't be alarmed by the dropping of the initial <g> in *weinidog* nor the fact the noun remains in the singular. These are matters for another post.)

So,

2 male ministers = *dau weinidog*
1 female minister + 1 male minister = *dau weinidog*

BUT … 2 female ministers = *dau weinidog* (despite there being the fem. version of 2, i.e. *dwy*. Consequenrly, *dwy weinidog*, although referring to 2 ministers who are females is incorrect.)

My question therefore, and my analogy is with the only other language I know well in this area, (French), is what happens in your gender based language. For example,

51 ministres = cinquante et un ministres = all the ministers are male
51 ministres = cinquante et un ministres = half the ministers are male, half are female (Please make allowances for my maths!)
51 ministres = cinquante et *une *ministres = all the ministers are female

My gut feeling is that the last example is wrong in French: With a masc. noun the numeral remains invariably masc. *even if the 100% of the persons present are actually female.*

Am I right, and does this 'rule' apply to your language? (Also, do you have feminine numbers for 2, 3 and 4?)

Diolch yn fawr / Thanks.


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## swift

Welsh_Sion said:


> My gut feeling is that the last example is wrong in French


That’s not how it works.  French “ministre” is both masculine and feminine. In “la ministre Schiappa,” “ministre” is feminine.


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## Welsh_Sion

So, you can write '*cinquante et unes ministres'* meaning '51 ministers' if they are *all *women? I think not.

(Unfortunately, I know '*ministre*' is not a good example as it is - now - both masc. and fem. Likewise with '*professeur*', although to an older generation, '*la professeur*' sounds odd.)

Let's try to use a job noun which is uniquely masc., but refers to a job which can be done by females: *médecin* for example. Surely, *cinquante et unes  médecin(e)s* is wrong for '51 female doctors'?


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## Nanon

Welsh_Sion said:


> 51 ministres = cinquante et une ministres = all the ministers are female


_Cinquante et une ministres_ is correct iff (if and only if) all the ministers are female (side note: _*cinquante et unes_ is not).
_Vingt et une élèves_ (all girls): Plozévet - Au collège, l’atelier danse attire vingt et une élèves
However, _*cinquante et une médecins_ sounds weird for 51 female doctors. In theory, _médecin _is now accepted as an epicene word but it may be too soon to change habits... 9.2.2 Mots identiques au masculin et au féminin (épicènes) - 9.2 La féminisation des titres de fonction - 9 La féminisation - Le guide du rédacteur - TERMIUM Plus® - Bureau de la traduction


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## Cossue

In Galician (and I guess that this holds also true for Portuguese_, mutatis mutandis_) we just decline *one *(_un_, _unha_) and *two *(_dous_, _dúas_) for gender. 

"51 ministras = cincuenta e *unha *ministr*a*s = all the ministres are female" is absolutly correct. But if we have just a male minister and fifty female ones then we must go to "cincuenta e *un *ministr*o*s".


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## Welsh_Sion

Thank you for the responses so far.

Am I right in thinking then, Cossue, that in galego you'd have: "52 ministras = cincuenta e* dúas *ministr*a*s" iff all 52 are female ministers?

It seems to me that Welsh is much more conservative in this regard as we could not refer to 52, 53 or 54 (or any other number, X2, X3, X4 - where X is a ten) using female numeral if the gender of the noun is masculine. My (female !) translator colleagues refute the idea of the equivalent of *dúas ministras *for our language_. _


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## apmoy70

Greek has three genders (masc., fem., neut.) and one quite logically, expects masculine, feminine and neuter forms in all nouns.
But, many names mostly of professions, that belonged to the ancient second declension, have identical masculine and feminine forms in MoGr (as they did in the ancient language too) and are distinguished by the gender of the adjective, or the definite article e.g:
-*«Ιατρός»* [i.aˈtrɔs] (masc. & fem.) --> _medical doctor, physician_ > *«νέος ιατρός»* [ˈne.ɔs i.aˈtrɔs] (masc.) --> _(male) new doctor_, *«o ιατρός»* [ɔ  i.aˈtrɔs] (masc.) --> _the (masc. nom. sing. definite article) doctor_, *«νέα ιατρός»* [ˈne.a i.aˈtrɔs] (fem.) --> _(female) new doctor_, *« η ιατρός»* [i i.aˈtrɔs] (fem.) --> _the (fem. nom. sing. definite article) doctor_.
-*«Δικαστής»* [ði.kasˈtis] (masc. & fem.) --> _judge_ > *«καλός δικαστής»* [kaˈlɔs ði.kasˈtis] (masc.) --> _(male) good judge_, *«η δικαστής»* [i ði.kasˈtis] (fem.) --> _the (fem. nom. sing. definite article) judge_.
Some people, are using feminine forms of the aforementioned nouns in their speech, *«γιατρίνα»* [ʝaˈtri.na] for female doctor, *«δικαστίνα»* [ði.kasˈti.na] for female judge, but they're clearly colloquialisms, and can't be used in formal occasions.

Not all numbers have feminine and neuter forms, in MoGr:
1 = *«ένας, μία, ένα»* [ˈe.nas] (masc.), [ˈmi.a] (fem.), [ˈe.na] (neut.).
3 = *«τρεις, τρεις, τρία»* [tris] (masc. & fem.), [ˈtri.a] (neut.).
4 = *«τέσσερις, τέσσερις, τέσσερα»* [ˈte.se.ɾis] (masc. & fem.), [ˈte.se.ɾa] (neut.), e.g:

*«Ένας ιατρός»* [ˈe.nas i.aˈtrɔs] (masc.) --> _one/a male doctor_, *«μία δικαστής»* [ˈmi.a ði.kasˈtis] (fem.) --> _one/a female judge_.

Collective plurals of mixed genders, have a priori, masculine gender: *«Πολλοί πολιτικοί»* [pɔˈli pɔ.li.tiˈci] (masc. nom. pl.) --> _many politicians_ («πολλοί» is masculine, «πολλές» [pɔ.les] is feminine), *«τρεις δάσκαλοι»* [tris ˈðas.ka.li] (masc.) --> _three teachers_ («δάσκαλοι» is masc. nom. pl. and used in collective plural of a mixed-gender group of teachers; the feminine form is «δασκάλα» [ðasˈka.la] (fem. nom. sing.), «δασκάλες» [ðasˈka.les] (fem. nom. pl.).


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## Circunflejo

Welsh_Sion said:


> Am I right in thinking then, Cossue, that in galego you'd have: "52 ministras = cincuenta e* dúas *ministr*a*s" iff all 52 are female ministers?


I'm not Cossue but I can tell you that you are right. The same is posible in Catalan too: cinquanta-dues ministras (if all of them are female).


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## Cossue

Welsh_Sion said:


> Am I right in thinking then, Cossue, that in galego you'd have: "52 ministras = cincuenta e* dúas *ministr*a*s" iff all 52 are female ministers?


As stated by Circunflejo, yep.


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## Dymn

Well, if the noun is masculine, numbers as well as adjectives and everything agreeing with it will be masculine. If it's feminine, then feminine. I guess this holds true for every gendered language.

For example "_víctima_" or "_persona_" are feminine in any of the Romance languages and will always be feminine even if they are all men. Same for "_ésser humà_" ("human being") or "_membre_" but for the masculine.

Then the question is whether job titles can *syntactically* take both genders. I'd say this is true in both Catalan and Spanish.

Then another question is whether they're *morphologically *feminine. This is not always true in Spanish. While RAE defends all male job titles in _-o_ feminize in _-a_, I'd say it's quite weird to say "_técnica"_ or "_música_", especially because they clash with nouns with a different meaning ("technique" and "music"). For example you could find "_las técnicos_", "_las músicos_", that is, a noun with a male ending (_-o_), but which behaves like a feminine noun.



Circunflejo said:


> The same is posible in Catalan too: cinquanta-dues ministr*e*s (if all of them are female).





Welsh_Sion said:


> (Also, do you have feminine numbers for 2, 3 and 4?)


Eastern Catalan has separate forms for 1 (m: _un_, f: _una_) and 2 (m: _dos_, f: _dues_), as well as derivative forms: 21, 22, 31, 32... 200, 201, 202, 203, ... Western Catalan and Spanish only for 1 (m: _un_, f: _una_) and derivatives: 21, 31, 41... It's not uncommon anyway to use "_dos_" for feminine nouns in Eastern Catalan...


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## Hulalessar

swift said:


> That’s not how it works.  French “ministre” is both masculine and feminine. In “la ministre Schiappa,” “ministre” is feminine.



My French dictionary (1968) gives "ministre" as masculine only. A lot of gender politics has of course flowed under the bridge since 1968. When I was learning French, Spanish and Latin in the 1960s it was simple. When told that the masculine includes the feminine and (in Latin) the feminine includes the neuter it was emphasised that that was purely a rule of grammar. I have not moved in French speaking circles for a very long time, but my impression is that in Spain the rule is followed, at least when speaking without consciously considering how natural gender lines up with grammatical gender. It operates to the extent that you hear mothers addressing their daughters as "niños" rather "niñas" because "niño" is the word for a child of any sex and only means "boy" when used contrastively with "niña". Forms like "niños/as buenos/as" can be written but would sound strange in speech. People are not going to say "niños buenos y niñas buenas" when they have been saying "niños buenos" all their lives.


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## swift

I’m not sure what your point is, @Hulalessar.  

Are you saying that “la ministro” is more common in Spain? Would people say “las ministros designados” or “cincuenta y un ministros” instead of “las ministras designadas” and “cincuenta y una ministras” even when all the ministers are women?


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## Circunflejo

Hulalessar said:


> It operates to the extent that you hear mothers addressing their daughters as "niños" rather "niñas"


 I'm yet to hear it.


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## Hulalessar

I was prompted to post to point out that whereas today "ministre" can be either masculine or feminine, 50 years ago it was considered a masculine noun. That led me to say that 50 years ago it was stressed, at least by my teachers, that whilst most things male would be masculine gender and most things female feminine, that we should think of masculine and feminine as being purely grammatical categories - not least because things like tables and chairs have gender and there is no French or Spanish third person pronoun reserved for inanimate things. It is also of course the case that there are some words which refer to humans which do not distinguish between male and female and like any other nouns they have to have gender. Some, like "victim", happen to be feminine. That does not lead native French or Spanish speakers to think of victims as female.

My impression is that going about their everyday affairs most Spanish speakers do not worry too much about correlating natural and grammatical gender. However, part of the process of increasing women's rights involves increasing people's awareness of how they use language. If a language has masculine and feminine genders it is inevitable that its speakers interested in promoting gender equality will get round to looking at grammatical gender and suggest that changes may need to be made. As discussed in another thread, if you suggest one change it may follow that to be consistent you need to make others. If you decide you need "abogada" should you have "dentisto"?

Out of curiosity, I looked up "ministro" in my Spanish dictionary (1970) and it is given as both masculine and feminine; there is no entry for "ministra". "Abogado" is given as masculine and there is no entry for "abogada".


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## Penyafort

Circunflejo said:


> I'm not Cossue but I can tell you that you are right. The same is posible in Catalan too: cinquanta-dues ministr*a*s (if all of them are female).



Correct. But it's ministr*e*s in the plural.

That's right. We'd say _cinquanta-un*a* ministres _but _cinquanta-dues ministres. _In Catalan, number two is the only one with a feminine plural, _dues_. But number one has no plural, only feminine. _Uns _and _unes _are only used as an indefinite article, similar to the English _some, a few, _so speakers don't perceive them as a real plural of _un, una_.

Yet regarding ordinals, since they are seen as real adjectives, for 51st we have _cinquanta-unè (ms), cinquanta-unena (fs), cinquanta-unens (mpl), cinquanta-unenes (fpl)_.


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## Circunflejo

Penyafort said:


> But it's ministr*e*s in the plural.


Yes, I realized when @Dymn corrected me a few posts above. Thank you both.


Hulalessar said:


> Out of curiosity, I looked up "ministro" in my Spanish dictionary (1970) and it is given as both masculine and feminine; there is no entry for "ministra". "Abogado" is given as masculine and there is no entry for "abogada".


There has been discussion for a long time and it'll be discussion for a long time. Some reading: MUJERES, GRAMÁTICA Y PODER: ¿PRESIDENTA, JUEZA O MINISTRA?


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## Dymn

Hulalessar said:


> As discussed in another thread, if you suggest one change it may follow that to be consistent you need to make others. If you decide you need "abogada" should you have "dentisto"?


Well, masculine nouns in _-o_ should have their feminine counterparts ending in _-a_, and if those don't exist, it's for the most part because women didn't take those roles. So the "creation" of those nouns not only is perfectly natural among native speakers but it's also fair, from my point of view.

A bit trickier in my opinion are those ending in _-e_ or consonant, which (in general) are supposed to be gender-neutral but you still have things like _presidenta_ or _concejala_ although no one seems to miss *_cantanta _or *_fiscala._

As for _-ista_, it's a part of gender-neutral nouns which end in _-a_, and _-isto _would be neither justifiable nor natural. If the lack of nouns ending in _-isto_ (barring _modisto) _can be said to be hypocritical, it should be with those like _presidenta, concejala, jueza_ and not _abogada, médica, pilota._


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## Circunflejo

Dymn said:


> _fiscala_


This one is in the DRAE...

I've realized that lately there are _poetisas _that call themselves _poetas_.


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## Hulalessar

Dymn said:


> Well, masculine nouns in _-o_ should have their feminine counterparts ending in _-a_, and if those don't exist, it's for the most part because women didn't take those roles. So the "creation" of those nouns not only is perfectly natural among native speakers but it's also fair, from my point of view.
> 
> A bit trickier in my opinion are those ending in _-e_ or consonant, which (in general) are supposed to be gender-neutral but you still have things like _presidenta_ or _concejala_ although no one seems to miss *_cantanta _or *_fiscala._
> 
> As for _-ista_, it's a part of gender-neutral nouns which end in _-a_, and _-isto _would be neither justifiable nor natural. If the lack of nouns ending in _-isto_ (barring _modisto) _can be said to be hypocritical, it should be with those like _presidenta, concejala, jueza_ and not _abogada, médica, pilota._



We cannot expect consistency in any language which develops "naturally". What we are talking about here though is conscious intervention where it is reasonable to expect consistency. If you say you need the word "abogada" you are arguing that you need separate words to distinguish male and female professions. If you are arguing that then, as you imply, you have a bit of a problem as there is no strict correlation between the forms of nouns and their grammatical gender. What is going on really is that people are asking how grammatical and natural gender relate and whether it is important that they should. Ultimately, when changes are proposed it will come down to whether people accept them so that the conventions of the language change.


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## Penyafort

Circunflejo said:


> Yes, I realized when @Dymn corrected me a few posts above. Thank you both.



Oops, sorry, I think I didn't read Dymn's post above.



Hulalessar said:


> We cannot expect consistency in any language which develops "naturally". What we are talking about here though is conscious intervention where it is reasonable to expect consistency. If you say you need the word "abogada" you are arguing that you need separate words to distinguish male and female professions. If you are arguing that then, as you imply, you have a bit of a problem as there is no strict correlation between the forms of nouns and their grammatical gender. What is going on really is that people are asking how grammatical and natural gender relate and whether it is important that they should. Ultimately, when changes are proposed it will come down to whether people accept them so that the conventions of the language change.



I agree with your statement. However, what I think Dymn meant and I partly agree too, is that it is not so difficult to 'accept' these changes in words such as _abogada _or _fotógrafa _because these are endings that are already seen in the feminine when they are adjectives (_holgado holgada, ágrafo ágrafa_) while adjectives ending in -al, -ente or -z are the same for both genders (_normal, diferente, feliz_). So the inconsistency comes from, then, saying _una fisc*ala* geni*al*, una presid*enta *difer*ente*, una jueza feliz... _This would imply turning all neutral-gender adjectives into masculine and feminine adjectives (_es una chica geniala, diferenta, feliza..._). And then start changing words with -a that are for both genders, like _persona_, into a new neutral-gender ending, like those who do such things as _persones felices _or _personxs felizxs_. Maybe it is not so much a case of inconsistency as of incoherency.


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## Hulalessar

There is an uneasy relationship between grammatical and natural gender. On the one hand, it is a bit disingenuous to suggest that grammatical gender (at least when it applies to humans) should be considered as something distinct from natural gender - the genders are not called "masculine" and "feminine" for nothing. On the other hand, when people speak they do not consciously think about gender any more than they do about other aspects of grammar. Spanish speakers must of course be aware that on the whole things male are masculine and things female are feminine, but is it not the case that the large majority have internalised the idea that generic terms for professions and relations are masculine and that, where there are masculine and feminine forms, the masculine will be used?

What do those who advocate change think they will achieve? Language is an important factor in changing people's attitudes on social issues, but does bringing in new words for female professionals, or insisting that you say "niños y niñas" instead of "niños" when addressing boys and girls, actually change anything or serve a useful purpose? I am inclined to think it just irritates most people, including those who are supportive of gender equality. Far better to concentrate on more solid issues.


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## Awwal12

First, Russian generally has no gender distinctions in plural, although it has separate feminine forms for "two" (in the nominative/inanimate accusative case) and "both" (here the dictinction remains through the whole declension paradigm, at least in the standard language). Also collective numerals in standard Russian may be used only with masculine nouns denoting men (therefore the group shouldn't contain women), minus some side uses (but in the actual colloquial language it's usually messed up anyway).

The separate feminine "professional" nouns for females are pretty widespread (probably more than in English, less than in some other Slavic languages) and, since they are almost exclusively formed by some kind of affixation (e.g. sportsmén "sportsman" vs. sportsmén*k*a "sportswoman"), they have separate declension paradigms (so there is no grammatical context where they could be actually mixed up with the masculine counterparts), but obviously they may be applied only to pure female groups, otherwise the masculine counterparts must be used (as long as there are any! ).


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