Why are Romance languages like Spanish are so weird?

K. T.   Sat Apr 18, 2009 8:42 pm GMT
I don't know that Greek was the only source for gender, but if you look at certain words whose gender seems "wrong" in Spanish, for example, you should consider whether the word was originally Greek or not.
K. T.   Sat Apr 18, 2009 9:15 pm GMT
If you look up "Why does Greek have gender" on google, the first hit is an overview of Greek grammar with some comparison of English, Spanish, Modern and Ancient Greek.

It is not my source for my opinion, but it is easy to read (I skimmed it) and interesting for people who are interested in English, Greek, Spanish, and Greek.

I still maintain that people should learn Greek if they are really interested in understanding IE languages. If I had learned Greek first, many things in other languages would have fallen like candy into my mouth.

I'm still a beginner in Greek and it is a fascinating language, very very familiar, easy to pronounce, etc.
ffd   Sat Apr 18, 2009 10:21 pm GMT
Strange because to me languages without genders are weird to me.
CommonAswhole   Sat Apr 18, 2009 10:37 pm GMT
Are there other IE-languages other than English and Afrikaans without genders? I'm wondering.
google_my_name   Sun Apr 19, 2009 4:45 am GMT
<<<<<Are there other IE-languages other than English and Afrikaans without genders? I'm wondering. >>>>>>

There many Indo-Aryan languages like Bengali (my native language) and Assamese that do not have gender nouns. Persian and other Iranian languages do not have gender nouns also.
CommonAswhole   Sun Apr 19, 2009 4:49 am GMT
Yeah, I googled the Bengali and the Persian part. Always happens when people type out questions, the idea of googling it comes to mind. ;) But it's interesting to see these things sumarized in a topic anyway.
google_my_name   Sun Apr 19, 2009 5:37 am GMT
I have talk to my sister, who speaks Hindi fluently and partial Spanish. She told me Hindi do not have gender nouns like Spanish do. Most sites mistakenly claim Hindi have gender noun like Spanish. Hindi noun are used to refer to certain gender like billi (is a female cat) and billa (is a male cat) (which is similar to English words like actor/waiter used for males and actress/waitress is used for females), where Spanish word take definite gender form like gato (spanish word for cat) is always going to be masculine word.

Gender nouns are very weird, indeed. I still do not get how people label certain thing male or female like rats are feminine and dogs and cats are masculine. I think some of the labeling are sexist like labeling books and other materials that is associated with intelligence in masculine form.
CommonAswhole   Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:00 am GMT
It seems that Armenian also appears to be a genderless Indo-European language.
para mim   Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:48 am GMT
Armenian is a genderless Indo-European Languages some Indo-Aryan languages too
Ouest   Sun Apr 19, 2009 8:58 am GMT
-E-
the ape
the table
the queen

-G-
der Affe
das Handtuch
die Königin

-S-
el mono
la mesa
la reina

o mar (po)
el mar (sp) - pero 'alta mar', 'baja mar'...
el mar (ca)
il mare (it)

la mar (oc)
la mer (fr)

el color (ca)
el color (sp)
il colore (it)

a cor (po)
la color (oc)
la couleur (fr)

In modern languages, gender is often only identified by the definite article, e.g. il and la in Spanish, le and la in French, der and die in German. In Latin there were no definite article like in Romance and Germanic languages, only the noun ending indicated the gender. How did the Romance definite articles evolve from Latin?
blanchette   Sun Apr 19, 2009 9:05 am GMT
In modern languages, gender is often only identified by the definite article

This is not true, Slavonic languages, Spanish, Italian,Romanian and Portuguese do have specific endings to point out the gender most of the time
Ouest   Sun Apr 19, 2009 2:10 pm GMT
blanchette Sun Apr 19, 2009 9:05 am GMT
In modern languages, gender is often only identified by the definite article

This is not true, Slavonic languages, Spanish, Italian,Romanian and Portuguese do have specific endings to point out the gender most of the time
_____________________________
French and Germanic languages don´t - what kind of evolution from Latin to Romance led to this?
What kind of evolution from Latin led to the Romance use of definite articles?
Guest   Sun Apr 19, 2009 4:25 pm GMT
<<I think some of the labeling are sexist like labeling books and other materials that is associated with intelligence in masculine form.
>>

Biblioteca (library) that is more than just a book, is feminine
Inteligencia is also femine in Spanish.
Mujer obviously is feminine too :-)
CommonAswhole   Sun Apr 19, 2009 4:53 pm GMT
One quick google brought me to a wiki page, which is backed by sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin#The_Romance_articles

Definite articles formerly were demonstrative pronouns or adjectives; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative adjective ille, illa, (illud), in the Romance languages, becoming French le and la, Catalan and Spanish el and la, and Italian il and la. The Portuguese articles o and a are ultimately from the same source. Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article from ipse, ipsa (su, sa); some Catalan and Occitan dialects have articles from the same source. While most of the Romance languages put the article before the noun, Romanian has its own way, by putting the article after the noun, eg. lupul ("the wolf") and omul ("the man" — from lupus ille and *homo ille)[20], a result of its membership in the Balkan linguistic union.

It seems demonstrative pronouns were the orgin of the definite articles in the Romance language.
For Germanic languages I have not a clue, I don't even know of a period of a written language without articles.
CID   Sun Apr 19, 2009 10:09 pm GMT
<<It seems demonstrative pronouns were the orgin of the definite articles in the Romance language.
For Germanic languages I have not a clue, I don't even know of a period of a written language without articles. >>

Demonstrative articles were the forerunners of both Western Romance and West Germanic definite articles.

I think what Ouest is implying is that the *use* of the demonstrative in Romance languages was a carry-over from the germanic invaders (Visigoths), who were the first to begin using the latin demonstrives in this way when speaking their version of latin (--in Latin and early Romance, definite article use was hitherto unknown). It mimmicked the note of demonstrative => definite in their own Visigothic language.

I think this topic has been covered here at Antimoon already.

According to one of the earliest examples of Common Romance, the Oaths of Strassbourg, definite article use was NOT a feature of common Romance nor Latin. It was imported from germanic languages, like Gothic.