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What is the purpose of grammatical gender??

Guest   Thu Apr 24, 2008 5:40 pm GMT

"Grammatical gender doesn't have anything to do with sex! " Exactly. Obrigado/obrigada have nothing to do with grammatical gender, BTW.

Guest   Thu Apr 24, 2008 6:05 pm GMT

In German, you also can refer to the nouns by demonstratives: dieser, diese, dieses, jener, jene, jenes: dieser Löffel (this spoon), diese Gabel (this fork), dieses Messer (this knife) or jener Löffel (that spoon), jene Gabel (that fork), jenes Messer (that knife). You also have ''derjenige, diejenige, dasjenige, welcher, welche, welches''. You have possessives: ''meines, deines, seines, unseres, eures, ihres Löffels'', ''meiner, deiner, seiner, unserer, euerer, ihrer Gabel'', ''meines, deines seines, unsres, eures, ihres Messers''. You have to say: ''sein Löffel'', if the spoon belongs to a male person, or ''ihr Löffel'', if it belongs to a female. ''seine Gabel'', if the fork belongs to a male person, or ''ihre Gabel'', if it belongs to a female, ''sein Messer'', if it belongs to a male person, or ''ihr Messer'', if it belongs to a female. der Löffel, dessen Griff blau war, ... die Gabel, deren Griff blau war, ... das Messer, dessen Griff blau war, ...

guest1   Thu Apr 24, 2008 6:07 pm GMT

Guest Thu Apr 24, 2008 6:05 pm GMT This post was mine.

zatsu   Thu Apr 24, 2008 6:12 pm GMT

<<@zatsu: I think the point is not about the suffix but about the dynamical assignement of a ''gender'' via suffixes. This will not work! You'll get confused because you will not remember to what the respective tag refered to a few sentences, phrases, words or moments before. Thats the reason why gender is fixed. You know to what word is refered to, or to what class of words it is refered to, even if you didn't hear the words before. (You might have met other people already speaking about a certain topic.) According to your proposal, a person joinig others had to first ask about the actual assignement of the tags before he or she could paritcipate in the conversation. In situations of emergency, this would be too time consuming and most likely to be misunderstood and therefore causing an evolutionary drawback.>> Hmm, think I got it fine and what you say afterwards is exactly what I was trying to convey, the gender has to be fixed so it can be taken advantage of. Thanks for explaining it more clearly though.^^ <<Obrigado/obrigada have nothing to do with grammatical gender, BTW.>> On the contrary, it certainly has!

Guest   Thu Apr 24, 2008 6:36 pm GMT

"Obrigado/obrigada" No, that is real gender; we're discussing noun classes.

Guest   Thu Apr 24, 2008 7:06 pm GMT

what do you mean, real gender?

K. T.   Thu Apr 24, 2008 7:34 pm GMT

Obrigado is said by males and Obrigada by females. It means "Thank-you" in Portuguese.

guest   Thu Apr 24, 2008 8:57 pm GMT

'Tiger' can also be female, it is genderless 'tigress' is female In English, we have little ways to specify if a substantive is feminine (-ess [goddess, waitress], -e [blonde, brunette], but nothing for masculine (other than the "he-" prefix) or neuter This is because traditionally in English, Masculine & Neuter are considered natural genders

Guest   Thu Apr 24, 2008 10:27 pm GMT

-Obrigado is said by males and Obrigada by females. It means "Thank-you" in Portuguese.- but nowadays, at least in Brazil, you can hear many women saying: Obrigado. (just like in some languages people say Bravo! to a women instead of Brava!) An adjective became an adverb.

zatsu   Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:06 pm GMT

<<-Obrigado is said by males and Obrigada by females. It means "Thank-you" in Portuguese.- but nowadays, at least in Brazil, you can hear many women saying: Obrigado. (just like in some languages people say Bravo! to a women instead of Brava!) An adjective became an adverb.>> I've said it before, but will say it again: women can say both "obrigado" and "obrigada", is not wrong.

zatsu   Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:09 pm GMT

Here's an article I found on the subject (in Portuguese) if anyone's interested: http://www.priberam.pt/duvidas/duvidas_detalhe.aspx?Id=1008

K. T.   Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:35 pm GMT

Hmmm, I think I've only heard "Obrigado" once from a woman, but good to know.

Guest   Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:44 pm GMT

K.T. Thanks for being so wonderful a soul! I am in awe of your noble sensations!

Guest   Fri Apr 25, 2008 2:53 am GMT

"K.T. Thanks for being so wonderful a soul! I am in awe of your noble sensations!" ---- Yes, he is dreamy... Noble and dreamy...

J.C.   Fri Apr 25, 2008 6:52 am GMT

Genders are a bunch of useless rules that make my linguistic experience suck!!! I still can't speak German properly because I never know what is "der", die" or "das". :) What in Portuguese is masculine is feminine in German sometimes like: Moon: O sol, DIE Sonne Feminine in Portuguese and masculine in German: Moon: A lua, DER Mond Feminine in Portuguese and neutral in German: Child: A criança, DAS Kind. I love the German language but the genders are way too messed up just like I read somewhere that even a cucumber has gender (Feminine) but a CHILD(Neutral) hasn't. :) Seriously speaking I think German is a very interesting and intellectual language but causes some problems to foreigners. I found this interesting link on Mark Twin entitled "The awful German language" and had lots of fun, even though I don't totally agree with it. http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html Viel Spaß!