# human female / animal female



## rusita preciosa

In AE it is normal to use the same word *female *for animals and humans:
*female police officer*
*female giraffe*

In Russian we have two separate words:
*женщина* /jenshina/ - woman 
*самка */samka/ - female animal
To call a woman "samka" is extremely derogatory.

As I remember correctly, French in this aspect is similar to Russian.

How about your language?
- do you have sepapate words for female animal and woman?
- if so, is it insulting/derogatory to call a woman the same word as "female animal"?


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## Calambur

En español:
una mujer policía 
una jirafa hembra 
una jirafa macho

Referido al sexo de los animales no humanos: hembra / macho.
Sexos de los humanos: femenimo / masculino. (También se puede decir hembra / macho, pero resulta poco "elegante").


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## rusita preciosa

Es un insulto de llamar una mujer "hembra"? (lo se que no es un insulto de llamar un hombre "macho" )


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## phosphore

Serbian:

žena=woman
ženka=female animal

Using "ženka" for a woman would be somewhere between funny and derogatory in the sexual way.


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## jazyk

In Portuguese we normally use fêmea (Br.)/fémea (Port.) (female) only for animals. For women, we say mulher or we put the noun or adjective in the feminine form.


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## enoo

rusita preciosa said:


> As I remember correctly, French in this aspect is similar to Russian.


Yes, indeed, calling a woman "femelle"/female in *French* would be extremely derogatory.
female animal : "femelle" (e.g "giraffe femelle")
female/woman : "femme" (e.g "femme officier de police")

(On the other hand, calling a man "mâle"/male could almost be a compliment to his manhood... Well, almost. I could also be a way to say he's the dumb macho kind, depending on the context.)


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## Orlin

phosphore said:


> Serbian:
> 
> žena=woman
> ženka=female animal
> 
> Using "ženka" for a woman would be somewhere between funny and derogatory in the sexual way.


 
Bulgarian is very similar: жена is woman and женска (and rarely самка - mainly scientific) is a female animal. Женска/самка for a woman have quite the same meaning.
The adjective женски is normally used to denote female animals unless we have separate words for the male and the female of the particular species; we don't normally use any words to determine femininity before nouns showing occupation and not gender specific (e. g. министър, професор, съдия etc. - usually "prestigious" occupations are gender neutral and gramatically masculine and the "female" equivalents are substandard - *професорка, *министърка, *съдийка etc.).


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## Encolpius

*Hungarian*: 

female police officer = rendőr*nő* [police officer + female put at the end]
female giraffe = *nőstény *zsiráf

So, we have two words and we never use nőstény even as a derogative expression for women, we have other words.


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## apmoy70

In Greek we too use two separate words:
«γυναίκα» (ʝi'neka, _f._)-->woman (noun)
«θηλυκός, θηλυκή (-κιά), θηλυκό» (θili'kos, _m._, θili'ci or θili'ca [very colloquial], _f._, θili'ko, _n._)-->female (adj.). E.g: «θηλυκός γορίλλας» (θili'kos ɣo'rilas, _m._)-->_female gorilla_; «θηλυκό κουνούπι» (θili'ko ku'nupi, _n._)-->_female mosquito_. 
Using «θηλυκή (-κιά)» or even the neuter «θηλυκό», would be derogatory in the sexual way (especially the neuter one).
A female Police Officer is «γυναίκα (woman) αστυνομικός» ((ʝi'neka astinomi'kos)

[ʝ] is a voiced palatal fricative
[θ] is a voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative
[c] is a voiceless palatal plosive


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## DanyD

ITALIAN

femmina = preferably for animal females
donna = human female

There are contexts where "femmina" would be sexist to use and others where it would not. For example:

"I maschi hanno maggior forza, le femmine maggiore elasticità" =
"Males are stronger but females are lither" 

"Femmina, vieni qui!"  "Female, come here!" (this sentence doesn't make much sense in English, but it's a litteral translation)

There are very many Italian "variants", though, so maybe another Italian forero from a different Italian region may think differently.

Hope that helps!


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## Encolpius

Ciao DanyD e benvenuta al foro, grazie per il commento. Speriamo di trovarti al foro frequentement, perché abbiamo bisogno anche di commenti italiani.


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## merquiades

Calambur said:


> En español:
> una mujer policía
> una jirafa hembra
> una jirafa macho
> 
> Referido al sexo de los animales no humanos: hembra / macho.
> Sexos de los humanos: femenimo / masculino. (También se puede decir hembra / macho, pero resulta poco "elegante").



Calambur. ¿No dirías varón y mujer para los seres humanos?  Saludos


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## Rallino

In Turkish there is not much distinction either. Rarely in some profession names, women tend to differ themselves, for example:

adam: man
kadın: woman

iş adamı = business man

If a woman is a _business man_, then she'd probably introduce herself as: _iş kadını_.


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## Elvus

In Polish we say *kobieta *to name a female human and *samica *while speaking of a female animal. I wouldn't dare to say so about any woman. But it might be suitable for some erotic stories perhaps (e.g. "She was acting like a mature *samica* following her wildest instincts, she was like an animal") .


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## OneStroke

Chinese:


For humans: Male is 男 nán, female is 女 nǚ


For animals: Female is 雌 cí, male is 雄 xióng

For whatever reason, in its usual order, male precedes female for humans, and female precedes male for animals.


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## rusita preciosa

So my question was, is it acceptable to call a woman (human) 雌 cī or it would be an insult?


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## Gavril

In English, another option for female animals is to use *she*- as a prefix: _she-goat, __she-wolf, she-donkey, _etc. 

A woman is not normally called a "she-person", but I don't think it sounds offensive to call someone that, just strange.


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## AutumnOwl

*Swedish:*
Human: _kvinna_ - woman, kvinnlig - female, feminine; _man_ - man,_ manlig_ - male
Animal: _hona_ - female; _hane_ - male

_En kvinnlig polis_ - a female police officer
_En kvinnlig klänning_ - a feminine dress
_Hon är mycket kvinnlig _- she is very feminine

I would say that it would be insulting to call a woman for _hona_ (although the word for she is _hon_ and the word for he is _han_)


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## marrish

For animals and also for plants in Urdu مادہ _maadah_ is used; I have never heard or read it with respect to any woman nor I can imagine it would ever be possible to be used. For e.g. names of professions, I believe it is the same as in Russian: خاتون ڈاکٹر _xaatuun DaakTar_  = a lady doctor = female doctor (not a gynaecologist!), خاتون پولیس اہلکار _xaatuun poliis ahl~kaar_ etc.

Of course many a times there are separate nouns to call male animals and female ones. Most of the time they are differentiated by their grammatical gender which is inherent to the noun: a horse: گھوڑا ghoR*aa*, a mare: گھوڑی ghoR*ii*. A cat: بلی bill*ii*, a he-cat: بلا billaa. Not always they need to be differentiated but mostly they have different names. In the scientific language, _maadah_ is and should be used but I have also noticed that sometimes words which belong traditionally to the grammar lingo tend to be used: مذکر مؤنث muzakkar (m.)/mu'annas (f.) but I consider it wrong. You can use it only when talking about nouns, not about the animals they are called by those nouns. Of course, female police officers are not called by "feminine".


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## OneStroke

rusita preciosa said:


> So my question was, is it acceptable to call a woman (human) 雌 cī or it would be an insult?



It's acceptable, but very weird. There are a handful of words in which 雌 cí (I made a mistake typing the tones last night, sorry) indicates a feminine quality rather than a female animal, such as 雌弱, although they are not common words. In the yuefu about Hua Mulan (the story of whom was popularised by Disney), Hua was compared to a rabbit at the end and the author, whoever he or she may have been, used 雌雄 when he/she said Mulan's gender could not be easily identified.

PS I know this is not part of your question, but 雄 can describe males - in fact, it has very positive connotations.


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## Radioh

Gavril said:


> In English, another option for female animals is to use *she*- as a prefix: _she-goat, __she-wolf, she-donkey, _etc.
> 
> A woman is not normally called a "she-person", but I don't think it sounds offensive to call someone that, just strange.



There's a song "she-wolf", now I understand what it means.
Back to the original question, we do have two seperate words used for female animal and woman. "Nữ" for woman and "cái" for animal.
Nữ cảnh sát/ cảnh sát nữ = female police.
Hưu cái = female giraffe.
And it is very very offensive to use "cái" for a woman.


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## nimak

Macedonian:

*жена* (žéna) = woman
*женка* (žénka) = female animal

*маж* (máž) = man
*мажјак* (mážjak) = male animal



rusita preciosa said:


> - if so, is it insulting/derogatory to call a woman the same word as "female animal"?


Yes.


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## Frieder

*German*:

Frau = woman
Mann = man

Weibchen = female animal (lit. a little woman)
Männchen = Male animal (lit. a little man)

But of course German, like most other languages, has special words for many sorts of animals pairs like Stute/Hengst (mare/stallion), Henne/Hahn (hen/cock) etc.


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## Armas

Finnish:
Human: *nainen*
Animal: *naaras*

Naispoliisi "female police officer"
Naaraskarhu "female bear"

And yes, it is insulting.


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## Penyafort

*Catalan*:

(for humans)
*dona *= woman
*home *= man

_Un (home) policia. Una (dona) policia. < _Word not always needed, as the article _un/una_ marks gender already.

(for animals)
*femella *= female
*mascle *= male

_Una girafa femella. Una girafa mascle._

The use of _mascle _and _femella _for man and woman is usually intentional and with restricted usage.




merquiades said:


> Calambur. ¿No dirías varón y mujer para los seres humanos?  Saludos



Lo que mucha gente desconoce es que varón tenía su propio femenino, _varona_. 

Recuerdo de antes en documentos, cuando se estilaba la V de varón, dudar de si la H se refería a hombre o a hembra.


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## Linnets

DanyD said:


> femmina = preferably for animal females
> donna = human female
> 
> [...]
> 
> There are very many Italian "variants", though, so maybe another Italian forero from a different Italian region may think differently.


South of Naples (or maybe Rome) _femmina_ is the only possibility for humans, since _donna_ is not used in everyday speech.


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## merquiades

Linnets said:


> South of Naples (or maybe Rome) _femmina_ is the only possibility for humans, since _donna_ is not used in everyday speech.


Are you sure?  Someone from Puglia told me off for using_ femmina_.


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## Linnets

merquiades said:


> Are you sure?  Someone from Puglia told me off for using_ femmina_.


Let me check _Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz. Femmina _(and similar words) is used in Northern dialects (Piedmont, Lombardy and so on, including Romansh and Friulian) and in _all_ Southern Italy.probably that Apulian didn't want to seem too dialectal.


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## Olaszinhok

Femmina for humans sounds derogatory nowadays, particularly in standard Italian.


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## Linnets

Olaszinhok said:


> Femmina for humans sounds derogatory nowadays, particularly in standard Italian.


Yes, but not in various dialects. Especially in Sicily it seems still strong.


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## merquiades

I mean Italian. This particular person did not speak dialect.  He even told me once that his parents purposely did not speak to him in the regional dialect when he was a child because it was considered particularly vulgar.  Anyway it is clear he doesn't like the word _femmina_ at all.  I picked it up from Andrea Camilleri novels so maybe it is Sicilian.


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## Ansku89

Armas said:


> Finnish:
> Human: *nainen*
> Animal: *naaras*
> 
> Naispoliisi "female police officer"
> Naaraskarhu "female bear"
> 
> And yes, it is insulting.


I don't think it's a common insult in Finnish. I can't remember hearing the word "naaras" used in the same way as for example b1tch is used in English. There are many other much more common derogatory words for a woman in Finnish (unfortunately).


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## Linnets

merquiades said:


> I picked it up from Andrea Camilleri novels so maybe it is Sicilian.


Camilleri used mainly _fimmina_ (plural _fimmini_) when trying to imitate Sicilian popular speech. However inspector Montalbano, who has an university degree (he's called _dottore_ by Catarella and others), uses Italian _donna_. A friend of mine from Naples sometimes defines herself _femmena_.


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## Penyafort

_Fémina _can also be used in some contexts in Spanish. For some reason, it's more common to see it in sport articles.


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