Gendered nouns

By Kate Sen · Jun 1, 2016 · ·
  1. As I discussed gendered nouns in other languages with someone today, he questioned why all inanimate objects could not just be neutral, which would be logically correct.

    Then it occurred to me that a book is neutral in German. How could that be?! They had three genders to choose from, and they assigned the male gender to a spoon, but neutral to books, as if spoons could ever have more personality than books? It's much better in Polish where the book is female. That makes more sense, especially in those olden days when books were hand copied with phallic-shaped pens or feathers, squirting semen-like ink onto the pages, as medieval monks made love to their books.

Comments

  1. Oscar Leigh
    That last bit! :superlaugh:
    And wow, gendered inanimate objects is an interesting idea.
  2. Wreybies
    Though I know your blog is intended to be read with humor... Grammatical gender is actually not necessarily linked or parallel with biological gender. The word gender itself is tightly related, etymologically, to the word kind. And it's this latter meaning that is applied to grammatical gender. There are uncounted languages that have genders for concepts that have nothing at all to do with biology. There are languages with genders for things that are round rather than square, for things used outside the home rather than inside, for things of ritual or religious importance rather than secular. It just so happens that Indo-European languages make use of a gender scheme that parallels the denotation of actual biological gender for those things that have it.

    </nerd rant> :-D
      Oscar Leigh and Kate Sen like this.
  3. Tenderiser
    Interesting point, Kate!

    Wrey - I've always wondered how people decided whether a table (or other object) was male or female. Thanks for the explanation.
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