genderless languages

Stelok   Wednesday, April 20, 2005, 23:58 GMT
There are a few genderless languages such as Tagalog.

In Tagalog, pronouns and nouns, even of family do not encode gender.

Siya- he/she/it

Tagalog- English
Bata- child/boy/girl
Kapatid- sibling/brother/sister
Anak- child/son/daughter
Pinsan- male cousin/female cousin
Asawa- spouse/husband/wife
Pamangki-nephew/niece

In order to specify the individual’s gender, you simply say anak na lalaki (son) or anak na babae (daughter). You say pinsang lalaki (male cousin) or pinsang babae (female cousin), batang lalaki (boy) or batang babae (girl)

In Tagalog, lalaki means male and babae means female. ng and na are noun modifiers or linkers similar to the German modifiers. Ng connects with the noun that ends in a vowel or the onsonant of "n". Na links with a noun that ends with a consonant.

Ang kapatid ay lalaki (the sibling is male)
Ang kapatid na lalaki (male sibling)

Si Megan ay maganda (Megan is beautiful)
Si Megan ay magandang babae (She is beautiful woman)
Si Megan ay babaeng maganda (She is beautiful woman)

However, Tagalog does have gendered nouns like Kuya (older brother) and Ate (older sister). Both of them are similar to Japanese titles of "onii-chan" and "Onee-san". Like English and Romance languages, Tagalog also uses gendered titles such as ginoo (sir) and ginang (ma'am).
Bubbler   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 00:07 GMT
Is Farsi a genderless language?
Ed   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 02:17 GMT
Armenian is.
Travis   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 02:19 GMT
I know that Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, and Japanese (outside of what English speakers'd call "pronouns", even though they aren't really such) are such.
Lazar   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 02:23 GMT
I've heard that Afrikaans is genderless. But you'd have to ask Andre in SA to be sure. :-)
andre in south africa   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 09:30 GMT
Afrikaans is genderless with regard to objects, not people as in the case of the languages mentioned above.
JJM   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 09:39 GMT
Fascinating thing, the linguistic concept of "gender."

A couple of North American native languages have an animate/inanimate gender system.

But the interesting thing about the system is that, while all living things are animate, not all non-living things are inanimate - some are considered animate.

This would seem to be related to religious interpretations of "spirits" in objects and I think it gives us a bit of a glimpse at why many languages have developed grammatical gender.
Joel   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 12:07 GMT
That probably why some people who speak genderless based languages have trouble with eg. getting the 'her' and 'his' wrong in English.
Adam   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 20:16 GMT
There are more genderless languages than languages with gender.
Adam   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 20:18 GMT
Basque also has no gender, and it's a complete mystery as to the origins of basque.
Adam   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 20:20 GMT
List of languages that do NOT use grammatical genders/noun classes


Afrikaans
Armenian
Basque
Bengali
Bugis
Burmese
Cebuano
Central Yup'ik
Chinese; *Chinese has class-specific measure words
Chol
English English has a vestigial natural gender system (on pronouns) but no grammatical gender
Estonian
Esperanto
Finnish
Georgian
Hawaiian
Hungarian
Ido
Ilocano
Indonesian
Interlingua
Japanese*
Kannada
Khmer
Korean*
Lao
Lojban
Malagasy
Malay
Malayalam
Makasar
Mandar
Nahuatl
Pirahã
Quechua
Quenya
Sindarin
Sinhala
Sami languages
Tagalog
Tamil
Telugu
Tlingit *
Thai *
Tok Pisin
Toki Pona
Tulu
Turkish
Tzotzil
Tzeltal
Vietnamese *
Yoruba

*These languages have measure words: nouns are classified but the classes are shown only by counting modifiers, not by other adjectives or articles.


List of languages using grammatical genders/noun classes

Ancient Greek
Akkadian
Arabic
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Cornish
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dari-Persian
Dutch
Faroese
French
German
Greek
Gujarati
Hebrew
Hindi
Icelandic
Irish
Italian
Klingon
Latin
Latvian
Lithuanian
Marathi
Manx Gaelic
Norwegian
Occitan
Old Prussian
Pashto
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Romanian
Russian
Sanskrit
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Sorbian
Spanish
Sumerian
Swahili
Swedish
Tajiki Persian
Ukrainian
Urdu
Welsh

Two genders/noun classes

Masculine and feminine

Akkadian
Arabic
Bengali
Catalan
French
Hebrew
Hindi
Irish
Italian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Occitan
Punjabi
Portuguese
Scottish Gaelic
Spanish
Urdu
Welsh

Common and neuter

Danish
Dutch
Low German
Norwegian (Riksmål)
Swedish

Animate and inanimate

Sumerian
Many Native American languages, e.g. Navajo


Three grammatical genders/noun classes

Masculine, feminine, and neuter

Ancient Greek
Belarusian
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Croatian
Czech
Faroese
German
Greek
Gujarati
Icelandic
Latin
Marathi
Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk)
Old Prussian
Polish
Romanian
Russian
Sanskrit
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Sorbian
Ukrainian

More than three grammatical genders/noun classes

Swahili
Zulu
Dyirbal
Bats
all Bantu languages
some Slavic languages, including Russian and Czech, make certain grammatical distinctions between animate and inanimate nouns, but only in the masculine gender.

More than three noun classes counting measure words

Japanese language
Ainu language
Korean language
Thai language
Chinese language


http://www.answers.com/topic/grammatical-gender-1
Adam   Thursday, April 21, 2005, 20:23 GMT
Not including Klingon (because it's included in the list of languages that have gender) there are 50 main languages that have gender, and 51 languages that don't have gender, and more if you count the Sami languages as separate.
Stefaniel p Spaniel   Friday, April 22, 2005, 11:26 GMT
The distinctions between animate and inanimate in male gender nouns Slavic languages are quite interesting, and may throw some doubt on such a simplistic division.

In Polish, for example, brands of car, types of dance and recently, it seems, SMS messages take a male-animate suffix when used with some cases. So you say (please correct me if I am wrong) 'Kup sobie samochod.' (buy yourself a car), but 'Kup sobie Forda (or Ford-a).'

Also, 'Wyslalem SMS-a.' (I sent an SMS)

So there.